THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 




COATLIQUE, THE AZTEC WOMAN GOD. 
(See page 102.) 

Frontispiece. 



THE SECRET OF 
THE PACIFIC 



A DISCUSSION OF THE ORIGIN 
OF THE EARLY CIVILISATIONS 
OF AMERICA, THE TOLTECS, 
AZTECS, MAYAS, INCAS, AND 
THEIR PREDECESSORS ; AND OF 
THE POSSIBILITIES OF ASIATIC 
INFLUENCE THEREON 



BY 

C. REGINALD ENOCK, F.R.G.S. 

AUTHOR OF U THE ANDES AND THE AMAZON " 
" MEXICO," " PERU," " FARTHEST WEST " 
U AN IMPERIAL COMMONWEALTH," ETC. 



WITH 56 ILLUSTRATIONS AND 2 MAPS 



NEW YORK : CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN 
19 1 2 



EISA 



{All rights reserved.) 



PREFACE 



In regarding archaeology some curious reflections 
may arise in the mind of the student. What is 
the true age of man's stone -building art? We 
seem to find overlapping rather than evolutive 
stages therein, as if man had suddenly learned 
to build pyramids and temples from some 
Instructor, rather than by the process of evolu- 
tion. Again, we may find our thoughts inclining 
to the reflection that there may have been 
long, unknown periods or cycles of civilisa- 
tion on this globe, in relation to which the 
few thousand years of known or conjectured 
history are a mere last chapter. We might be 
tempted to think that man, as we know him, is 
the remains of a more perfect civilisation, or 
part of such a cycle, working his way up again, 
rather than being a pioneer of the race. There 
is no unreason in such a supposition. We are 
not bound to accept the finality of evolution, as 
at present conceived, either in the biological or 
the cultural sphere ; and, indeed, the near future 
may bring some strong modification of it. 

As regards the world's very ancient ruins, 
shall we ever discover some exact mechanical 
process for determining their age? Will it one 
day be possible by some hitherto unsuspected 
process or attribute to assign the number of 

5 



6 



PREFACE 



sunrises or earth-revolutions and sun-cycles that 
have passed since a given wall was erected or 
a given stone taken from its quarry bed? May 
not alternate light and darkness have left some 
calculable impression on " scarped cliff and 
quarried stone " ? 

One poignant reflection there is : that man 
could build such beautiful dreams in sculptured 
stone as in all ages he has, and yet be so bar- 
barous to his kind. Temples have generally 
been synonymous with cruelties and sacrifice. 
Furthermore, Masonry, whether as an Art, 
whether as an Order, presents itself to us 
mainly as a great Pretension, which embodies 
little of the milk of human kindness, but which 
rather separates man into selfish sects. It is 
after the lapse of time, when temples and palaces 
have become monuments, that we revere them — 
the perpetuation in stone of sentiment and faith. 

As to the problem of the ancient American 
civilisations, it is an old one, a mysterious one, 
and certainly not to be explained with ease, either 
one way or the other. There are many factors 
to be taken into account as concerns their origin ; 
and even to connect such origin with some 
ancient cycle of civilisation or lost continent is 
not outside the field of admissible conjecture ; 
as if both their cultures and those of the Old 
World were offshoots of some parent stock, long 
since buried in the mists of age and change. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 

PAGE 

WHAT IS THE SECRET? . . . * . Ij 

Unknown empires — The lure of universalism — On the 
trails of Cortes and Pizarro — Arizona and the Cliff 
Dwellers — The wonderlands of Mexico and Peru — The 
" Unknown God " of America — The marvel of Easter 
Island — From Peru to Egypt — From Mexico to Asia — 
Biological and cultural aspects — The speechless anthropoid 
— Man's ancestor in America — Across Behring Strait — 
Geographical similarity of America and Asia — Man's 
orginal cradle-land — The " Stones of the Sanctuary " — 
The Aztecs and the Incas — Chinese origin ? — Nothing new 
under the sun. 



CHAPTER II 

WHENCE AND HOW . . . . . * 3 2 

Asiatic and American enigmas — The fault of topography 
— Preservation of ruins — Wilful destruction — Universal 
attributes of primitive man — Evolution of the pyramid — 
Stout denials of connection — Indigenous culture — Wide- 
spread cradle-lands — From China to Peru — The theory of 
imported origin — Opinion of Humboldt — Analogies with 
Egypt — Yucatan and Ceylon — Central America and Java 
— The Maya Arch — No real arch in America — The "lost 
ten tribes" — Lord Kingsborough's work — Mexico the 
origin of Egyptian art ?— Across Behring Straits — Junks 
from China and Japan — Kublai Khan — Personal im- 
pressions — The Asiatic Eskimo — Polynesian influence — 
Easter Island — Yucatan as the lost Atlantis — Similarities 
of art — Evolution of Aztec and Inca art — The universal 
Sun God. 

7 



8 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER III 

PAGE 

THE TRAVELLER'S POINT OF VIEW . . . -49 

A few points of geography — Coast of North and South 
America — The great Cordillera — Ice and fire— Comparison 
with Bible lands — Seats of the ancient civilisations — Vast 
distances in prehistoric America — Arizona and California — 
Mexico, its people and railways — The republics of Central 
America — Good and bad qualities — Panama — Colombia 
and Ecuador — Peru, its people and mountains — Varied 
national traits — Chile and the Trans-Andine railway — 
Mongolian immigration in South America — A brief survey 
of the ancient ruins — Hints to travellers — Climate and 
equipment. 



CHAPTER IV 

NORTHERN STEPPING-STONES . . . -65 

The Eskimos — An important region — Behring Sea culture- 
area — A link between Asia and America — Language — Art 
— Mongol origin — Boats and navigation — The Aleutians — 
Customs and religions of the Eskimos — The road from 
Asia — Siberia — Neolithic man — The Hydah Indians — The 
Grand Trunk Pacific Railway — Bancroft's description— 
Hydah carvings — Totem poles — Canoes — Inter-continental 
navigation — The Nootkas — Native customs — The Apaches 
— California to-day — Behring Strait — The " Miocene 
Bridge" — Other early land connections with America — 
Passing reflections. 



CHAPTER V 

THE CLIFF DWELLERS ' . . . -79 

Western America — Colorado, Utah, and Arizona — Cali- 
fornia — The great American desert — The Rocky Mountains 
— Old and new civilisations — The Puye ruins — Mesa Verde 
National Park — Remarkable structures — Unique situations 
— Subterranean chambers — Cliff temples and palaces — 
Connection with the Aztecs — Creation legends — Native 
story of evolution — The Pueblos — Pueblo pottery — Prayers 
for rain — Delta lands — Prehistoric irrigation channels — 
The Swastika in America — Casas Grandes — Frontier with 
Mexico. 



CONTENTS 



9 



CHAPTER VI 

PAGE 

EARLY MEXICO — TOLTECS AND AZTECS . . -93 

Character of early Mexico — Bloodthirsty religion — The 
problem of its origin — The Toltecs — Picture-writing — 
Early history — Mexican mural remains — The Teocallis 
— Stone of Sacrifice — Awful women-goddesses— Analogy 
with Babylon — Pyramids of the sun and the moon — 
Teotihuacan — Pottery and acoustics — Other pyramids 
— Cholula and Papantla — Remarkable structures of 
Monte Alban — The Zapotecs — Sculptured halls of Mitla— 
Ruins in Guerrero and Tehuantepec — Unexplored 
territory — The dawn of a literature — Mexican calendar — 
Aztec religion — The prayer of Nezahualcoyotl to the 
Creator, the "Unknown God." 

CHAPTER VII 

THE MAYA WONDERLAND . . . . . Il8 

The civilisation of the Mayas — Yucatan and Chiapas — 
Age of Maya culture — Arrival of Cortes — Types of archi- 
tecture — Pyramids and galleries — The magnificence of 
Palenque — The beau-relief — Temples and crosses — The 
cross in prehistoric America — Yucatan millionaires — 
Henequen and oppression — Rubber and slavery — Ruins of 
Uxmal — The Maya Arch — Astonishing architectural forms 
— Chac-mol figures — Egypt and Mexico — Le Plongeon's 
theories — The mastodon in stone — Prehistoric hydraulics 
— The famous Cenotes — Sacrifices of virgins — Yucatan and 
the Ganges. 

CHAPTER VIII 

CENTRAL AMERICAN MARVELS . . . . 140 

Guatemala — British Honduras — Honduras — Salvador 
— Nicaragua — Costa Rica — Difficult topography — Pilpil 
civilisation — Migration from Mexico to Central America — 
Ancient sculptures and reliefs — Farthest limit of Maya 
culture — Chac-mol sculpture— Ruins of Quirigua — Beau- 
tiful stelae — Ancient city — Terraces and plazas — Huge 
carved stones — Hieroglyphs — The "Greek" pattern- 
Santa Lucia Cozumahualpa — Numerous ruins — Expedition 
of Cortes — Three pyramids — The Quiches — The famous 
Popol Vuh — Story of the Creation and the Deluge in 



CONTENTS 



prehistoric America — Ruins of Copan — Pyramids, ram- 
parts, and terraces — Metal-craft of Chiriqui — Reading the 
hieroglyphs — Junction between Mayas and Incas — 
Ecuador and Columbia — Mysterious conquerors. 

CHAPTER IX 

THE INCAS — CHILDREN OF THE SUN . . . 155 

The fascination of Peru — Means of travel— Some of the 
wonders of the world— Remarkable building sites — Topo- 
graphical situations — Climatic influences — The coast zone 
— The Incas and the pre-Incas — The Andes — Extent of 
Inca Empire — The Quechua language — Relative ages — The 
Son of the Sun — A "virgin birth" — Duration of Inca 
Empire — The famous royal roads — Lake Titicaca — The 
ruins at Cuzco — The " navel " of the empire — Sacsaihua- 
man — Inca stone masonry — Fortress of Ollantaytambo — 
Intihuana and Pisac — Astronomical pillars — The throne of 
the sun — The Amazon forest — Unfathomable Tiahuanako 
— Transport of monoliths — The " Unknown God " — Prayer 
to the Creator. 

CHAPTER X 

PERU — THE LAND OF ENIGMAS . . . . 1 75 

Northern Peru — Quito — Huaraz and Cajamarca — Pre-Inca 
remains — The Upper Mararlon — Castle of Chavin — Sub- 
terranean chambers and monoliths — The Gentiles — The 
ancient fortresses — The Andenes — Former population — 
Ruins of Huanuco Vie jo — Beautiful stone doorways — The 
Inca palace and fortress — Ancient town — Analogy with 
Egyptian structure ? — Cliff-towers and graves — Caves and 
mummy-cellars — The ancient ruins of the coast region — 
Pachacamac — The only example of columns — The Chiinus 
and ruins of Chan Chan — Incas and pre-Incas — Copper 
tools — Roofs — Embalming the dead — The Huacas — 
Mummy-hunting — Peruvian pottery seven thousand years 
old!? — Beautiful ceramic art — Asiatic origin ?— Mongolian 
ancestors — Analogies with China — Mysterious unread 
hieroglyphs. 

CHAPTER XI 

A PREHISTORIC SOCIALISM . . . . .195 

A remarkable social system — The Inca land laws — 
" Superior to all Christian nations " — Small holdings in 



CONTENTS 



11 



early Peru — The land for the (prehistoric) people ! — No 
beggary permitted — Common ownership of natural 
resources — The guano — Public water-rights — No mono- 
polies allowed — Inca hydraulics — Wonderful irrigation 
system — The Andenes — Socialistic agriculture — Neigh- 
bourly assistance — No Tammanyism ! — Help for widows 
— Tax payments in goods and labour — Boots instead of 
rates — Hallelujah — Public granaries — Precautions against 
famine — Corn reserves — Scientific colonisation — The fall 
of the Inca Socialism — Hints for Britain. 



CHAPTER XII 

COMPARISONS AND CONTRADICTIONS . . . 207 

From Asia to America ? — No iron or vehicles — Stone 
tools in early American art — Remarkable stone-shaping 
methods — Indefatigable architects — Massive work — 
General characteristics — Moving the monoliths — Work on 
the high plateaux — Engineering knowledge in prehistoric 
America— The Pueblo ruins — Early explorers — Age of the 
Mexican and Peruvian ruins — No origin from Asia ? — 
Cord-holders in masonry — Native gallows — Similarity of 
ground plans — Peru and Mexico compared — Columns in 
early architecture — The potter's wheel non-existent — 
Beautiful textile work — Native dyes — Killing home in- 
dustries — Prehistoric metallurgy — Jewel-craft — Ore- 
smelting at Potosi — Admirable goldsmith's work — 
Abundance of gold — Spurious antiquities — Methods of 
historical record — Hieroglyphs and the qaipos — Analogies 
with China, Tibet, and Tahiti. 



CHAPTER XIII 

CONFLICTING TESTIMONIES ..... 23O 

Further evidence — Linguistic affinities — Analogies of signs 
and symbols, handicrafts and myths— Imported or in- 
digenous ? — Mongolian affinities — The Eskimos — Great 
variety of habitat — Mixed Spanish blood — Resemblance of 
Mexicans and Peruvians to Japanese — The Chinaman at 
home in Peru — Language offers no proof — Chinese and 
Otomi — Possible prehistoric immigration from Asia — 
Kublai Khan — Affirmative facts — Humboldt and the 
Mexican and Asiatic calendars — Babylonian - Greek 



12 



CONTENTS 



imitation — Similarities in ornament — The " Greek " orna- 
ment universal — The " lost ten tribes " — The Swastika ; 
widespread occurrence — Oriental symbols — The cross in 
prehistoric America — The four ages of the world in Asia 
and Peru — Mesopotamia and Peruvian river-craft — 
Rameses III. and Lake Titicaca. 

CHAPTER XIV 

AN ENIGMA OF THE OCEAN. . . . 257 

A speculative voyage — Stepping-stones to Asia — Easter 
Island and others — Great stone images — The " wicked 
giants" of Genesis — Possible connection between Peru 
and Mexico — With Polynesia — Great stone houses — The 
Archaic Noah — Size of the Colossi — Other remains- 
Tablets and hieroglyphs — Analogy with Tiahuanako in 
Bolivia — Are they phallic emblems ? — Log of the Flora — 
Dimensions of the images. 

CHAPTER XV 

THE MYSTERIES OF THE ISLES .... 267 

Strange migrations — The Polynesians and others — The 
Papuans and Malaysians — Mystery of their origin — The 
Caucasians — Origin of the Polynesians — Clever navigators 
— Original home — Long sea journeys — Polynesian ship- 
builders — Mythology — Decline — Character — Pitcairn 
Island — Tahiti — The Marquesas — Affinity with early 
America — Stone images — Stone platforms — Art — Tonga 
Islands — Megalithic remains — Caroline Islands — Lele and 
Ponape — Astonishing prehistoric structures — Metalanim 
— A Pacific Venice — Yap and other remains — Great basalt 
prisms — Metalanim harbour — Lele — The breakwater — 
The Marianas— Stone structures. 

CHAPTER XVI 

THE LOST CONTINENT ..... 292 

A Pacific Atlantis — India and Java — Early Malaysians 
— Early Polynesians — Strange voyages — Connection with 
Peru and Mexico — Timor — Delhi — Tasmania — The Malay 
Archipelago — " Out of the sea " — A wide-scattered people 
— Malay sailors— Hindu ruins in Java — Boro Budor — Indian 



CONTENTS 



13 



influence — Angkor Thorn — The Khmers of Cambodia — 
Astonishing ancient temple and ruins— Brama faces — The 
Ainos of Japan — The hot-pot of Asia — The Mongolian in 
America — Kublai Khan — Mongolia — Tibet and Peru— The 
Veddahs of Ceylon — Australia's part in the secret — 
Caucasian fragments — Mankind's vast antiquity — Ancient 
land connections — Elevation and subsidences of Pacific 
shores — Japan — The Andes — Markham's theory — The 
Funafuti borings — Darwin and Murray — The "subsi- 
dence " theory — The new Stone Age — The inexplicable 
problem. 



CHAPTER XVII 

WORLD-WIDE AFFINITIES . . . . . 315 

The voice of mythology — A new science — Analogous 
romances — The psalms of the Mexicans and Peruvians — 
The Creation myth of the Hydahs — The " redeemer " of 
the Nootkas — The copper canoe — Emblems of the Sun 
God — Flood story of the Okanagans — Scomalt — Deluge 
story of the Melanesians — Qat the hero— Prayer of the 
voyager — General belief in a Supreme Being — Sun-worship 
— Roman Catholic mythology — Aboriginal belief in immor- 
tality — Curious customs — The couvarde — Phallism — 
"Indecent" Inca images — Singular custom in Peru — 
Scarab-worship of the South American Chaco — Native 
veracity — Travellers' veracity — Missionaries' good faith — 
Flood stories— The Book of Enoch and the Deluge — 
Theosophy and the Central American ruins. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

A SUBLIME COSMOGONY . . . . . . 343 

Anthropoid to architect — Necessity for more research — 
A many-sided subject — More light required — What is our 
foundation ? — Teachings of archaeology — History repeats 
itself — A dim and distant stage — Retrospect of human 
movements— The great antiquity of mankind — An endless 
argument — The " All-Father "—A universal culture in 
remote times — Babel and the Flood — A golden age — A 
Universal Texture. 



IN »EX .... . . .355 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



COATLIQUE, THE AZTEC WOMAN GOD . . Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

RUINS OF CHICHEN ITZA, " THE HOUSE OF THE NUNS," 

YUCATAN . . . . . .34 

RUINS OF MITLA, SOUTHERN MEXICO . . -3% 

RUINS OF QUIRIGUA, GUATEMALA. STELA WITH HIERO- 
GLYPHICS . . . . . .46 

LAKE TITICACA, SOUTHERN PERU . . . 58 

THE "SEAT OF THE INCA," PERU . . .64 

A TOTEM POLE, NORTH-WEST BRITISH COLUMBIA . 72 

INDIANS OF VANCOUVER ISLAND . . . 76 

RUINS OF THE CLIFF-DWELLERS: CLIFF PALACE . 83 

RUINS OF THE CLIFF-DWELLERS, AND POTTERY . . 90 

TOLTEC PYRAMID OF THE SUN AT TEOTIHUACAN . 96 

THE AZTEC STONE OF SACRIFICE .... IO3 

OMECIHUATL, MEXICAN WOMAN GOD . . . I05 

RUINS OF MITLA, HALL OF THE " GRECQUES," SOUTHERN 

MEXICO ...... I08 

RUINS OF MITLA, HALL OF THE COLUMNS . .110 

THE AZTEC CALENDAR STONE . . . . 11$ 

MEXICAN PICTURE-WRITING . . . . 115 

14 



The Secret of the Pacific 



CHAPTER I 
WHAT IS THE SECRET? 

Unknown empires — The lure of universalism — On the trails 
of Cortes and Pizarro — Arizona and the Cliff Dwellers — 
The wonderlands of Mexico and Peru — The " Unknown 
God" of America— The marvel of Easter Island — From 
Peru to Egypt — From Mexico to Asia — Biological and 
cultural aspects — The speechless anthropoid — Man's 
ancestor in America — Across Behring Strait — Geo- 
graphical similarity of America and Asia — Man's original 
cradle-land — The "Stones of the Sanctuary" — The 
Aztecs and the Incas — Chinese origin ? — Nothing new 
under the sun. 

What do we mean by the Secret of the Pacific ? 

Set between the world's mightiest oceans, the 
Pacific and the Atlantic, lies that greatest of all 
islands— the twin -continents of America. A great 
mystery still shrouds these twin-continents, a 
riddle still unread, for whose solution the world 
may be said to have waited four hundred years. 
What is this mystery? 



18 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



History would have us believe that these great 
seas had roared defiant, uncrossed by man — with 
the exception, grudgingly admitted, of some 
shadowy Northmen from Europe in 983 — until 
the end of the fifteenth century A.D., and that 
these great continents, until then, had been un- 
visited from the outside world since time began. 
Yet, scattered for thousands of miles throughout 
the forests and deserts of these twin -continents 
are the remains of civilised empires which once 
flourished there : the ruined temples, palaces, 
pyramids, and habitations of peoples and nations 
who arose, fell, and rose again, ages before the 
caravels of the Vikings and the Conquistadores 
turned their prows towards the setting sun. 

What I have ventured to term the Secret of 
the Pacific is the mystery surrounding the ancient 
civilisations of the three Americas, the homes of 
the Toltecs, the Aztecs, the Mayas, the Incas, 
and their predecessors. What was their origin? 
What was their connection with each other ? Had 
they any link with the Old World? Did they 
in olden times, draw inspiration and knowledge 
from Asia, Egypt, Babylon? If not, and they 
sprang unaided from their own soil, and created 
their own culture, what were the conditions of 
their independent development? 

These, of course, are not new questions. In- 
deed, they are well worn, and scientific dogma 
and sentimental discussion have long centred 
about them — opinions and theories, however, 
which are widely scattered, or contained in 
erudite and inaccessible tomes, out of reach of 



WHAT IS THE SECRET? 19 



the general reader, for whom 1 the present work 
is intended. 

It is not, however, a journey through library 
shelves alone that we shall undertake here, but 
an actual traverse, at least in part, of North and 
South America : those great regions forming the 
•Western world which we erroneously term 
" New " — the ancient world of America before 
Columbus. Upon the trails of Cortes and 
of Pizarro my travels have taken me ; trails 
which in some cases are almost as remote and 
difficult to-day as they were when first traversed 
by the white man from Europe, and the horse 
first ascended the Andes. We shall follow those 
paths, but to such journeyings we must add other 
incursions through space and time, both real and 
conjectural, which will take us from Mexico to 
Egypt, from Peru to Babylon, from the American 
shores to the strange islands of Polynesia. From 
those broad regions where the Toltec, the Aztec, 
and the Inca flourished we must seek to gather 
up those threads which some have conjectured 
lead to Asia ; which, could we but unravel them, 
might establish some co-relation of man and 
his arts between Asia and America, and, that 
said, of man throughout the world. It is an 
alluring theme, but we shall embark upon it 
with an open mind. It is not our purpose 
to establish new theories, but rather to inquire 
into the case, to observe what has been accom- 
plished in its solution, and what remains to 
be done. 

What are the monuments left by these ancient 



20 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



people, and what are the evidences of their civi- 
lisations ? For four thousand miles or more they 
lie upon the Western American littoral and Cor- 
dilleras, and seem to extend in isolated patches 
across the Pacific Ocean in a north-west path 
to Asia, like vast stepping-stones between the Old 
World and the New. In the rocky, ravines and 
scorching mesas of Arizona and Colorado, wilder- 
nesses whose trails were first mapped out by the 
bones of hardy explorers, are the extraordinary 
habitations of the Cliff Dwellers. On the high 
slopes and tablelands of Mexico are strange 
pyramids and mysterious courts and quadrangles, 
with carved stone halls about them, a puzzle to 
the beholder. In the dense, tropic forests of 
Yucatan are the sculptured facades of palaces 
and pyramid -temples of exceeding beauty and 
ingenuity, ruined and abandoned, or surrounded 
here and there by the wattle huts of half -savage 
Indians. In Central America sculptured stelae 
of great beauty and peculiarity protrude 
strangely from the jungle, whilst far away 
below the Equator, along the scorching coast- 
line of Peru and amid the bleak tablelands and 
snow -crowned ranges of the Andes, are cun- 
ningly-wrought temples and impregnable for- 
tresses, which could only have been fashioned 
under the mandates of ruthless, new-world 
Pharaohs or devout American Solomons. In 
the Mexican deserts and by the waters of the 
mysterious Lake Titicaca of the Incas, the Sun 
God and the Moon God held sway, and from 
unnumbered centuries ago ancient worshippers 



WHAT IS THE SECRET? 21 



raised great temples to the " Unknown God." 
Deepening the mystery still, there arise, strange 
and grim upon solitary, sea-girt Pacific islands 
1 in the track of the setting sun, colossal images 
and fortresses, whose origin no man can conjec- 
ture. Here, in brief, are the chapters, written 
in stone, of some great and perhaps universal 
history — a history which, so far, we have not 
been able to inscribe in the general plan of 
human record. 

This, then, is the Secret of the Pacific. What 
was the origin of the people who fashioned these 
structures and planted the civilisations of early 
America? Did they simply spring from the soil 
of the New World, independent of outside influ- 
ence, and evolve their arts upon it ? Or were they 
and the germs of their art carried thither in dim 
ages past? Was it some prehistoric migration 
of intrepid or persecuted man, who from some 
Asiatic cradle-land made his way across endless 
steppes and boundless seas, bearing in his breast 
the germs of civilisation and the stone-shaping 
arts that first tenanted these wilds of the three 
Americas ? Were they pioneer offshoots of some 
Eastern potentate's magnificences — some ambi- 
tious priests or would-be kings, envious of the 
power that built pyramids and palaces under 
Oriental skies, who privily adventured forth to 
seek a dominion where they themselves might 
be paramount? Did they, from their erring 
memories, or the skill of craftsmen they had 
lured with them, build up these replicas of pyra- 
mids and palaces and towers of Babel amid the 



22 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



deserts and mountains of a new land? Were 
they and their works part of the scheme of man 
and history of which ancient Assyria and Egypt 
were the earlier chapters ? 

If they were we shall be forced to reflect that 
they covered up their trails remarkably well, and 
supposing that to be true, it is indeed a case for 
some antiquarian sleuth-hound, some archaeo- 
logical Sherlock Holmes ! If they were not and 
we are to consider them as an indigenous, autoch- 
thonous manifestation of the works of Nature and 
Providence in a special hemisphere, there still 
remains the contemplation of very remote times 
in which their arts were evolved — times which 
could scarcely have been less remote than those 
which were necessary for the development of 
man's handicraft in the lands of the Euphrates 
and the Nile. 

Both theories, the imported and the autoch- 
thonous, possess attractions . To regard mankind 
as coming from a common source and central 
point and having spread over the face of the 
earth, rather than having been generated at 
several points simultaneously, carries with it a 
certain sense of satisfaction. It seems to give 
man a greater standing to suppose that the Divine 
spark of his origin was engendered in one place 
only, and upon a "special occasion," rather than, 
like trees or animals, to have come to being in 
the four corners of the earth profusely and in- 
dependently. The natural tendency to trace man, 
wherever he may be found, to a common origin 
is, popularly, very strong. Although we might 



WHAT IS THE SECRET? 23 



maintain that the biblical account of man's origin, 
assigning a definite point in time and space to 
his appearance, might be given a wide interpre- 
tation, nevertheless it is something of a shock 
that we experience in the possibility of man's 
appearance as scattered and independent races, 
and not as a special being derived from one 
spot. 

But if on the one hand we love to trace man- 
kind to this common origin, the other contention 
of independent generation is not without certain 
allurements and compensating circumstances. 
There is much in the idea, to the philosophical 
mind, that Nature, having reached a certain point 
in her workings when it was time for man to 
appear, brought him to being simultaneously in 
several parts of the world. Nature might be 
regarded as having been pregnant with the 
coming of man, and as giving birth to him in Asia, 
Africa, and America simultaneously. The time 
had arrived for man to inherit the environment 
which — man feels he may assume it as true — had 
been prepared for him, and this appearance may 
not necessarily have been confined to a garden 
by the Euphrates alone. 

It is to be recollected, and the reflection is an 
interesting one, that the " new " world of 
America is in many respects a replica of the 
" old " world of Eurasia, or Europe-Asia, " with 
the corresponding parts reversed, right and left, 
like two hands " as it has been said by geo- 
graphers. The regions of the lakes, the moun- 
tain chains, highlands and lowlands, have or have 



24 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



had their counterparts in both worlds, and with 
their geographical resemblances and similar geo- 
logical ages and formations form truly remark- 
able likenesses of each other. At the time when 
geological knowledge was less advanced than it 
is to-day the idea was prevalent that the new 
world of America was an " old world " geologi- 
cally, and the old world of history a " new world " 
geologically. In reality both worlds are old 
geologically, or at least, in general terms neither 
can regard the other as its senior. They were 
both equally ready for human life, and in 
both have men had equally to struggle to 
support it. ! 

There are, of course, two considerations to 
be faced in this contemplation of man's presence 
in the New World — one biological, the other 
cultural. That is to say, was man as a being 
indigenous to America, and was his prehistoric 
civilisation indigenous, or were both conditions 
imported ones? It is the opinion among ethnolo- 
gists that the same inherent mental nature is 
to be recognised in all men, and that when we 
compare this fact with our knowledge about the 
doings and thinkings, learned, by scientific obser- 
vation, of all the races of people on the earth, 
we are entitled to draw the conclusion that all 
human races are of one species and one family. 
It is held generally that the stock races of 
America must have descended from this one 
family, because there are no anthropoid apes in 
America, none of the ape family higher than the 
Cebidae, from which it is impossible to trace man. 



WHAT IS THE SECRET? 25 



As for Australia there are not even Cebidae in 
that continent. 

The anthropoid apes, it will be well to recollect 
— the man-like apes found only in the Old 
World (although even this has been disputed) — 
are of special interest to those who accept the 
" Darwinian " theories, due to the place in Nature 
assigned to them by the evolutionists. 

Whilst it is generally admitted now " that no 
fundamental difference as regards anatomical 
structure exists between these higher apes and 
man, it is equally true that none of this species 
is in the direct line of human ancestry. There is 
a vast gulf to be spanned between these man- 
like apes and even the very lowest race of man- 
kind, by some ' missing link.' Such a link, 
indeed, in the form of a creature reconstructed 
from the fossil remains of an erect ape-man 
found in the forests of Java — the famous Pitecan- 
thorpus erectas of Dr, Dubois — is believed in 
by some." Into this field, however, we shall not 
intrude much here. 

It is, therefore, generally recognised as a 
scientific fact that mankind is specifically of one 
family, and in such case it is to be argued that 
he must have had an original " cradle-land," 
from which the peopling of the earth was brought 
about by migration. Where was this , cradle- 
land? The evidence seems to show that, first 
of all, the world " was peopled by a general 
proto -human " form and each division of man 
would thus have had its pleistocene ancestors, 
and would have become differentiated into races 



26 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



by the influence of climatic and other surround- 
ings. As to the cradle -land, there have been 
many theories, generally inclining towards the 
strange region of Indo-Malaysia, into which it 
will be also our business to enter in this volume., 

But how could this migration from a remote 
cradle -land in the old world have taken place 
into the new world of America, which is an 
island ? Geology has been able to show the exist- 
ence of earlier continents or pre -arrangements 
of continents ; that the earth's crust has under- 
gone great changes. Complete land communica- 
tion, it is held, existed from Indo-Malaysia. An 
Indo -African and a Eurafrican continent are 
shown to have existed and the extension of Aus- 
tralia towards New Guinea formerly is held to 
be probable, and thus " man's ancestor was free 
to move in all directions over the Eastern Hemi- 
sphere." As for the Western Hemisphere, this 
was probably connected with Europe and Asia, in 
Tertiary times, geology assumes, by a continent 
in the one case from Scotland through the 
Faeroes, Iceland, and Greenland, and in the other 
by continuous land, over what is now Behring 
Straits, just as South America may have been 
connected with Australia by a Pacific continent 
and with Africa by an Atlantic continent. 

Are we to suppose, then, that the only contact 
between the beings of the Old World and the 
New was in those remote times before man was 
really man, when he was still little removed from 
the brute and had not yet been made white, 
brown, or black, such as his climatic environment 



WHAT IS THE SECRET? 27 



assigned to him ? This would not greatly help us 
in the solution of the Secret of the Pacific, and 
we must inquire more closely of the possibilities 
of prehistoric immigration. It may be assumed 
on the one hand that in some far distant epoch 
a speechless anthropoid passed over a land bridge 
between Asia and America where Behring Sea 
now rolls, which sank behind him, as has been 
suggested, or that via an Atlantic continent where 
now Iceland and its surrounding oceans stand 
the French cave-man came to America, or that 
the " long-headed Eskimo-Botocundo type and 
Mexican round-headed type " reached the New 
World from the Old by either route, before man 
had any culture at all ; or again that wanderers 
from the Malayan world drifted to the South 
American coast. Whether these conjectures be 
true or not is a question which doubtless 
will receive further elucidation ; but it is 
agreed by many ethnologists that the aborigines 
of the Western Hemisphere came from the 
Eastern, even if biological evidence of Caucasoid 
or negro blood in the American's veins before the 
immigrations of known history is lacking. 

But before leaving the matter of the origin of 
man's ape-ancestor-relatives it is to be recollected 
that knowledge upon these points is very in- 
complete. Anthropology and evolution are but 
new sciences, and still in a state of flux. It 
may be established yet that man's immediate 
ancestors did come to being in the New World 
equally with the Old, and that closer research 
and exploration will reveal this, proving that 



28 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



America was, as has been maintained, 1 " on the 
basis of the discoveries of fossil anthropoids and 
fossil man in southern South America, the scene 
of origin of man himself." Discoveries are 
constantly being made which cause modification 
of existing theories and even force upon the 
scientific world alterations in the calendar formed 
from the rocks and drifts. New pages might be 
added to that diary at any time, new discoveries 
at unexpected moments. 

Here we will take leave of the biological 
problem. From the wanderings of the speechless 
anthropoid to the builders of sculptured palaces 
is a far cry. The cultural problem may or may 
not be explained by the existence of very primi- 
tive men ; or rather it does not seem to provide 
satisfactorily for the similarity of man's arts in 
the widely separated regions of Asia and 
America. It is, of course, arguable that, given 
primitive man and natural resources, he will 
evolve habitations and even property ; that he 
will pile one stone on another to form walls 
for dwelling-place or defence. But is he 
likely also to evolve details of design and orna- 
mentations of similar character in two different 
worlds ? 

It will be seen from these preliminary remarks 
how vast is the field upon which we have to enter, 
in considering the origin of man and his culture 
in America. There is scarcely a country in the 
world which is not in one way or another cap- 
able of being drawn into the matter. It involves, 

1 By Ameghino. 



WHAT IS THE SECRET? 29 

but literally, not figuratively, a survey of the 
world " from China to Peru " — that well-worn 
aphorism of travel -lore, and many branches of 
science are involved in its intelligent considera- 
tion. To attempt all this in the scope of one 
volume would be an ambitious task, but, as I 
have stated elsewhere, the purpose in view is to 
stimulate further inquiry into this fascinating 
but neglected subject, rather than to produce a 
compendium of all the information concerning it, 
which would be impossible. 

Thus, the principal question we have to ask 
is : Is it reasonable to suppose that these huge 
twin -continents of America have lain incognito 
by the great communities of Asia and the Old 
World until the mere yesterday of Columbus? — 
incognito throughout the ages of unfathomable 
time since mankind became a reasoning, con- 
structive being ? Columbus reached America less 
than four and a quarter centuries ago, and Eric 
the Red and his early Norsemen in 983 — 
admitting this latter as a historical fact. Can we 
believe that the Chinese and other Asiatic people, 
so far advanced as they were in knowledge and 
science thousands of years before that time, had 
no knowledge of the land we now call America? 
It is an alluring theme, yet one which geo- 
graphers and historians seem to have neglected 
strangely. 

Whatever may be the answer, we are con- 
strained to reflect that these " new " worlds of 
America have been the scene of cycles and 
changes of humanity throughout very long 



30 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



periods, eras of activity of which the remains 
we now see in these deserts and forests are but 
recent evidences, links fashioned upon older 
ones. America must have been the theatre of a 
strange and extensive activity during its past. 
We are reminded at every turn, in these 
mouldering ruins, of the doings of bygone 
peoples. " The stones of the sanctuary are 
poured out in the tops of every street " — literally, 
in these ancient, silent communities of Mexico 
and Peru. " How doth the city sit solitary 
that was full of people ! How is she become 
a widow ! " might indeed be the lamentation of 
some unchronicled prophet about these perished 
empires of the Aztec and Inca, whose pathetic 
story, still unread, lies before the traveller to- 
day. 

The subject of pre-Columbian influence upon 
America had always interested me strongly, but 
I have looked in vain for a full and impartial 
research into its truth or falsity. I pondered upon 
it among the coast -hills of California in 1894, 
where fancy might seem to conjure up the forms 
of prehistoric junks, laden with men from Asia, 
sailing out of the sunset, and later in the shade 
of mouldering walls and pyramids in Mexico, 
sheltering from the noonday sun, or among 
the ruined strongholds of some ancient Peruvian 
chieftain of the Andes, where I had sought refuge 
from the cold after many a hard day's ride, the 
same problem haunted me. Thence, letting fancy 
travel over the vast Pacific, among its scattered 
islands, with their extraordinary images and 



WHAT IS THE SECRET? 31 



walls, from Easter Island to the Carolines, 
stretching out to Asia — structures to whose origin 
we have no clue— the imagination is in danger 
of running riot. Nature, geography, and man 
are strangely and pathetically associated in this 
great mystery of the Pacific, and once more we 
learn that there is nothing new under the sun. 



CHAPTER II 



WHENCE AND HOW 

Asiatic and American enigmas — The fault of topography — 
Preservation of ruins — Wilful destruction — Universal 
attributes of primitive man — Evolution of the pyramid — 
Stout denials of connection — Indigenous culture — Wide- 
spread cradle-lands — From China to Peru — The theory 
of imported origin — Opinion of Humboldt — Analogies 
with Egypt — Yucatan and Ceylon — Central America and 
Java — The Maya Arch — No real arch in America — The 
" lost ten tribes " — Lord Kingsborough's work — Mexico 
the origin of Egyptian art ? — Across Behring Straits — 
Junks from China and Japan — Kublai Khan — Personal 
impressions — The Asiatic eskimo — Polynesian influence 
— Easter Island — Yucatan as the lost Atlantis — Simi- 
larities of art — Evolution of Aztec and Inca arts — The 
universal Sun God. 

Why, we may ask, has this enigma of the Pacific 
not yet been solved ? Assyria and Egypt yield up 
their secrets— why not America? 

It is a satisfactory reflection that the farther 
we recede in time from matters of antiquity the 
more does their true history tend to become 
revealed. The labours of painstaking students 
and the results of archaeological expeditions sent 
out to grapple with hidden secrets and treasures 
of history upon the spot are constantly affording 
evidence that a great mass of obtainable know- 

32 



WHENCE AND HOW 33 



ledge exists, waiting to be uncovered and pieced 
together. 

We are, however, legitimately entitled to ask 
how it is that ancient Asia yields up its secrets 
whilst ancient America does not, or not yet. The 
reply is to a large extent in matters of inclination 
and interest, and obvious enough. The Old 
World, the lands of the Bible and the Classics and 
their people, are intimately bound up with our 
own life. They are part of that chain of civi- 
lisation of which we to-day are the latest links, 
and everything we learn about what they did 
does but add a chapter to our own history. Not 
so with these lost civilisations of America, or 
not unless we can show that they have had any 
part in a vast general system of which all cultures 
were offshoots. But there is also another reason 
for the comparative neglect of ancient America, 
which may be summed up in the word " topo- 
graphy." Not only in the New World is the glow 
and colour of Oriental populations wanting, but 
its inaccessible conditions have to be considered. 
The remote valleys and inclement plateaux of 
the South American Andes and the malarious 
forests of Yucatan, where the buried temples of 
the prehistoric American Pharaohs or Belshazzars 
lie, are in marked contrast with the enjoyable 
climate and relatively open lands of Egypt and 
Syria, where such extensive and painstaking anti- 
quarian work has been carried out. Professors 
and students have there the surroundings of a 
summer holiday, but it is not so in the great 
deserts and mountains of North and South 

3 



34 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



America. A pioneer spirit, a long purse, and 
hard journeyings, and hard fare on mountain - 
trails, with the odour and lore of the mule and 
the saddle, are the necessary, adjuncts of investi- 
gation in the vast field of Spanish-American 
archaeology. From the Euphrates to the Nile is 
but a thousand miles. The world as known to 
the ancients was but a small circle, but the world 
of early America covered a zone of half a hemi- 
sphere. For one student in this field there are 
fifty for Egypt or Babylon. 

Nevertheless, it is not to be supposed that 
American archaeology has been neglected. 
Famous archaeologists have devoted years and 
fortunes thereto, and their fascinating works are 
to be found in the libraries. The Governments 
of some of the American nations are alive to the 
value of research now. In the United States 
a Government Bureau of Ethnology has explored 
and protected the ruins of the Cliff Dwellers. In 
Mexico the Government has trained antiquaries 
in the field and maintains valuable museums. 
Even in Peru a Governmental Historical Institute 
has been established and European advisers 
retained for the study of the ancient cultures 
of the land : and Bolivia has its museum. 

But in Central America and South America it 
cannot be said that there is any particular care 
of the ruins exercised, and havoc and destruction 
is being wrought upon the famous sites in many 
places, both by nature and man. In Yucatan 
the natural levers of root and branch in tropic 
jungle are efficient agents in throwing down 



WHENCE AND HOW 35 



pyramids and walls which the ignorant inhabi- 
tant only spares because of their inaccessibility. 
In the Andes the native shepherd ruthlessly 
takes lintel, quoin, and sculptured block, which 
have been produced with the love or agony of 
his unknown predecessors, to build a corral for 
his cattle ; and not alone the ignorant shepherd, 
for modern railway builders of Anglo-Saxon race 
have carted away from the ruins of Bolivia the 
stones of sanctuaries in train-loads to build their 
warehouses and bridges. 

It is surely time for some combined inter- 
national action in preserving and investigating 
these beautiful and irreplaceable chapters in stone 
of the history of the Pacific, to supplement the 
work of private explorers and antiquarians — 
French, German, American, and British. The 
subject of pre-Columbian culture in America is 
of world-wide interest and importance, and must 
more and more occupy the attention of Ameri- 
canists of all nationalities. Further, there must 
be some " commercial " value about these ancient 
sites. In the United States the community is 
fully alive to the value of the old Cliff dwellings 
as an attraction for tourists, and surely the beau- 
tiful buried temples of Central and South 
America are of such value as ought to warrant 
the utmost jealousy in their preservation. 

We have now to consider — and it is a question 
of first principles which bears intimately upon our 
subject — whether, given primitive man in America 
(or elsewhere), he could evolve arts similar to 
those of the Old World. The teachings of anthro- 



36 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



pological science after world-wide research have 
tended largely to cause the abandonment of the 
old theory that a similarity among independent 
peoples of customs, myths, arts, and crafts 
warrants an assigning of them all to an early 
cousinship ; or at least that is the present ten- 
dency, which may or may not change. We are 
constrained to think that there has always been 
an inherent genius in man, which, allowing for 
variation in environment, tends to develop culture 
along similar lines . This has been succinctly put 
in the article on anthropology in the last edition 
of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, from which 
I will quote here, as representing recent thought 
on the matter : " American man need not owe 
the minutest portion of his mental, religious, 
social, or industrial development to remote 
contact with Asia or Europe, though he were 
proved to possess identical usages. An example 
in point is that of pyramid-building. No ethical 
relationship can ever have existed between the 
Aztecs and the Egyptians, yet each race 
developed the idea of the pyramid tomb through 
that psychological similarity which is as much 
a characteristic of the species man as his 
physique." 

This is, of course, tantamount to a declaration 
for the autochthonous theory, and we may accept 
it or not as regards America. The whole ques- 
tion hinges upon it, and, as we have preferred 
to think, the question cannot be denied or 
affirmed in its entirety, so far. 

There is, indeed, a strong school of thought in 



WHENCE AND HOW 



37 



this respect which absolutely denies any borrowed 
culture for early America and asserts that such 
things are vanity, and proclaims that there is 
nothing about the Mexican and Peruvian cultures 
which cannot be attributed to natural develop- 
ment. I shall quote several American opinions 
upon this point, first that of the able writer of 
the article " North American Indians/' in the 
publication last mentioned, and this I will give 
literally, as expressing a downright view. The 
writer is an American professor of anthropology, 
a high authority upon the subject. He says : — 
" So far as is known, the primitive culture 
of North America is fundamentally indigenous, 
being the reactions of the Indian to his environ- 
ment, added to whatever rude equipment of body 
and of mind was possessed by the human beings 
who at some remote epoch reached the New World 
from the Old. The North American Indians have 
been the subject of numerous popular fallacies, 
some of which have gained world-wide currency. 
Here belongs a mass of pseudo-scientific and 
thoroughly unscientific literature embodying 
absurd and extravagant theories and speculation 
as to the origin of the aborigines and their 
* civilisations ' which derive them (in most extra- 
ordinary ways sometimes ), in recent or in remote 
antiquity, from all regions of the Old World — 
Egypt and Carthage, Phoenicia and Canaan, Asia 
Minor and the Caucasus, Assyria and Babylon, 
Persia and India, Central Asia and Siberia, 
China and Tibet, Korea, Japan, the East 
Indies, Polynesia, Greece, and ancient Celtic 



38 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



Europe, and even mediaeval Ireland and Wales. 
Favourite theories of this sort have made the 
North American aborigines the descendants of 
refugees from sunken Atlantis, Tartar warriors, 
Malayo-Polynesian seafarers, Hittite immigrants 
from Syria, the ' Lost Ten Tribes of Israel,' &c, 
or attributed their social, religious, and political 
ideas and institutions to the advent of stray junks 
from Japan, Buddhist votaries from south-eastern 
Asia, missionaries from early Christian Europe, 
Norse Vikings, Basque fishermen, and the like." 

These statements, whilst worthy of every 
respect, cannot fail to give the impression that 
their writer does protest too much. It might 
even give rise to a suspicion in the mind of the 
reader that they are impaired by some curious 
prejudice, such as is observable in other 
American writers on the subject, notably Dr. 
Brinton, quoted in a later chapter, another 
eminent authority ; as if American philosophers 
resented the suggestion that early America had 
borrowed anything from Europe or Asia, and 
desired to conserve for America the credit of 
having been able to evolve its own culture. It 
is true that there has been much unscientific 
writing on the subject, but on the other hand, 
famous scientists, both American and others, 
have supported the opposite view, of derived or 
imported culture-origins for America. Among 
these was the famous and accurate Humboldt, 1 
and, to-day, is the famous scientist Dr. Alfred 
Russel Wallace, whose views are expressed in his 
1 " Vue des Cordilleres." 



WHENCE AND HOW 39 



letter to me quoted elsewhere. Some writers have 
expressed the opinion that Humboldt's views are 
out of date, whilst others adopt them as the prin- 
cipal authority. Among European students of 
the subject the tendency seems to be to preserve 
the " open door " to the prehistoric immigrant 
into America, and possibly this tendency is be- 
coming stronger. In a desire only to investigate 
and approach nearer if possible to the truth of 
the subject all sides must be considered, and 
throughout these pages numerous authorities, for 
and against, are quoted. If these appear to 
involve some repetition, that is inevitable in 
striving for a consensus of opinion. 

In admitting the theory for a derived origin 
for these early American civilisations we are at 
once confronted with the question "whence?" 
followed inevitably by " how?" 

As has been remarked, theories and analogies 
have been adduced pointing to nearly every 
Oriental country as this place of origin — roads 
which, in greater or less degree, seem to termin- 
ate in " that blessed word Mesopotamia ! " 

That is to say, that strong family likenesses 
have been encountered by some observers be- 
tween Mexican and Peruvian customs and objects 
of antiquity and those of China and Chaldea. 
The civilisation of China, it is generally agreed, 
was connected as to its origin with Babylon. 
Egypt also furnishes examples, some of which 
cannot easily be brushed aside. India, China, 
Japan, Java, and the Malay Peninsula have been 
pointed to by other students, especially as 



40 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



concerns the ruins of Yucatan, as the real issuing - 
point for the early Mexican stone-shaping art. 
So remarkable are the similarities in one or the 
other fields that such theories have much to 
excuse and even to support them. The beautiful 
temples of Chichen Itza, one of the principal 
groups of the Yucatan remains, have been said 
to bear a striking resemblance in some archi- 
tectural features to some of the ancient structures 
of Ceylon. The great temple at Palenque, 
another of the Yucatan groups, has been 
likened, to the satisfaction at least of one of the 
explorers of the middle of last century, as regards 
some of its details, with the temple of Boro Budor 
in Java. Similarity is adduced from the fact 
that the truncated pyramid crowned by a temple 
was characteristic of Buddhist structures, and 
that the Yucatan buildings are of this character. 
Certain resemblances in workmanship and design 
certainly appear to be traceable. The Maya 
" Arch " so-called, for it does not embody the 
principle of the arch, is also found in Buddhist 
structures, and according to some writers, in no 
others except in those of Yucatan. 1 It occurs 
in Peru, however. The circular arch, vault, or 
dome is not found among the early American 
structures nor any suspicion of it in prehistoric 
times, and if any relation existed between the 
ancient Mexican and the Egyptian this is 
strange, as the arch exists from earliest times 
as an Egyptian structure. 

1 u The American Egypt/' Arnold and Tabor, gives an 
interesting dissertation on this subject. 



WHENCE AND HOW 41 



Indeed, one explorer, Dr. le Plongeon, 1 who 
spent a fortune and part of a lifetime in the 
investigation of the Mexican ruins, declared as 
a result that not only were the Mexican and 
Egyptian civilisations connected but that the 
Mexican was the origin of the Egyptian ! This 
announcement was received with scorn and in- 
credulity by other archaeologists, and we shall 
have occasion to refer to this matter later. Yet 
another famous student, Lord Kingsborough, 
strove to prove that the early Mexicans were the 
lost ten tribes of Israel, a view earlier advanced 
by a Spanish historian. He also spent a fortune 
in his investigations and publications, which have 
been of great value even if his views were not 
accepted. 

As to the " how," the first theory that has 
presented itself is that of prehistoric immigra- 
tion via Behring Strait, a matter which will be 
constantly discussed in these pages. It is con- 
ceivable that men, bearing in their bosoms know- 
ledge of the stone-shaping arts and of the type 
of civilisation of the East, crossed the few miles 
of open water which separate Asia from America, 
doubtless in skiffs or primitive craft, and made 
their way thence over North and South America. 
Further, it is conjectured that vessels or junks 
may have been blown out of their course, or 
aided by the Japan current and so arrived upon 
the American coast. It is even stated that in 
the time of Kublai Khan a Chinese vessel landed 
on the shores of Peru, 2 and it is at least conceiv- 
1 See p. 133. 2 See p. 241. 



42 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



able that the later periods of early American 
culture might have been influenced by such direct 
contact. There is no reason why such un- 
recorded voyages should not have been made, 
or why pre-Hispanic immigrants should not have 
arrived in that way. Indeed, it is a matter which 
cannot be lightly dismissed, especially when it 
is recollected that late in the nineteenth century 
" Japanese junks still drifted over by the ocean 
current to California at the rate of about one 
a year." Also, the Aleutian Islands form a sort 
of natural link between Asia and America. 

In connection with this aspect of the subject, 
I shall venture here to record some personal 
experience. When in San Francisco I had 
among my acquaintances an educated Pole, 
who was an escaped political prisoner from 
Siberia, and a friend of his, who used to 
join us in cosmopolitan discussion, was an 
educated Chinaman. It was an expressed 
opinion by these men that America had been 
discovered by the Chinese long before the time 
of Columbus . Indeed, the idea of America being 
a discovery and property of Spain, only four 
hundred years ago, seemed to be regarded by 
them as a matter almost for humour. There 
was something impressive in this view. Surely a 
people who knew of the mariner's compass, of 
printing, of gunpowder, and who had inherited 
the wonderful scientific lore of their continent 
for thousands of years must have known of 
America. Is it not difficult to think that these 
great shores, facing the sunsets, a continuous 



WHENCE AND HOW 43 



line twelve thousand miles long, could have 
slumbered ever since the dawn of history, and 
never received touch from that mighty civilisation 
of Asia which faces it on the other side? The 
astonishing secretiveness of the Chinese, when 
European travellers first came in contact with 
them, must have guarded the knowledge, and it 
is reasonable to think that the Chinese knew 
perfectly well that the land of America existed, 
but wished to keep the secret to themselves. 
As to the difficulty of navigation, are we in a 
position to state positively that in much earlier 
times the Chinese had no large vessels capable 
of crossing the Pacific? We know that junks 
have constantly drifted across, as mentioned 
before. I must confess to the belief that if the 
ancient libraries of Central Asia were ransacked 
and records diligently overhauled, we should find 
accounts of voyages or migrations from China 
to the New World, and perhaps the present 
awakening of China will enable these matters 
to be revealed. There must be records of 
this. 1 

As regards the possibility of ingress into 
America by Behring Strait, this has been a 
favourite theory, constantly discussed by many 
writers. It has been shown of late that the 
extreme north-western region of North America 
is of great importance ethnologically in this 

1 It is a curious coincidence that after writing upon this 
subject in the above strain I should have come upon 
similar ideas in a book quoted later on, which I had never 
seen before, viz., " Enoch/' by Kenealy. See p. 333. 



44 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



connection, and this is dealt with in a subsequent 
chapter. 

There remains the hypothesis of Polynesian 
contact and influence on the Pacific coast of 
America, which has obtained a certain amount 
of acceptance by a few ethnologists. Such 
influence is held to be traceable, and upon its 
line of march must be considered the extra- 
ordinary remains of stone-shaping man upon 
Easter Island and the groups of islands of 
Oceania, descriptions of which are entered into 
in their respective places. Whilst we tread in 
that connection the ground of interesting specula- 
tion, and enter into an extremely involved tangle, 
such an influence is admitted by one of the most 
famous scientists, Dr. Wallace. 

Fact and fable indeed crowd upon us in our 
attempt to unravel the mystery of the Pacific. 
Lost tribes and lost continents form part of the 
story, as will be seen. The fabled continent of 
Atlantis, and the supposed vigorous and cultured 
race who were reputed to inhabit it, also figures 
therein. I will quote from Dr. Holmes, the well- 
known American ethnologist, whose works on 
the ancient buildings of the New World are 
standard sources of information. He says :— 

" It has been a favourite theory with many 
students that the American races may have been 
derived from this source " — referring to Atlantis 
— " inheriting therefrom the germ of that strange 
culture now represented by so many ruined 
cities. Whatever may be the truth with respect 
to the disappearance of the one continent, it is 



WHENCE AND HOW 45 

a curious fact that another land has risen from 
its watery bed — that of Yucatan. Geology 
shows us this plainly. The massive beds of 
limestone of which the peninsula is formed 
contain, and are largely made up of, remains of 
the marine forms of life now flourishing along 
the shores. Fossil shells obtained from the rocks 
in various parts of the country are all of living 
species, and represent late Pliocene or early 
Pleistocene times, thus possibly bringing the date 
of the elevation of Yucatan down somewhat near 
that of the reputed sinking of Atlantis some 
eleven or twelve thousand years ago, or not far 
from the period that witnessed the oscillation 
attending the close of the glacial period." 1 

The peninsula of Yucatan and its buildings is, 
indeed, one of the most interesting portions of 
the great field we are considering, and contem- 
plation of its beautiful ruins and its singular 
geological structure has furnished a theme for 
the imagination of various writers ; but as a 
science its archaeology is still undeveloped, and 
in its infancy. But it is generally agreed that 
the accounts of the civilisations of Mexico and 
Peru at the time of the Spanish conquest show 
a state of culture which must have put the 
Spaniards to shame, as regards some of their 
attributes. 

" The one problem that is of the greatest 
interest still awaits solution, viz., whether there 
is any relation, in culture or race, between the 

1 Holmes, "Ancient Cities of the New World," Boston, 
1864. 



46 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



inhabitants of ancient America and those of 
Europe or Asia. One thing is certain, that if 
there be any connection, it is of infinite 
remoteness. But it is at any rate note- 
worthy that the same designs, patterns, and 
even games are found in ancient Mexico and 
India and China : and whether this arises by 
reason of accident or from borrowings is a 
problem worthy of most serious study. If once 
a key be found to the ancient Mexican inscrip- 
tions, so plentifully scattered through the ancient 
monuments, it may be that enlightenment will 
come even more suddenly and more surely." 1 
This quotation from the same publication cited 
before, but by different authors, serves to show 
again how varied and contradictory are the views 
held upon the subject. 

Whatever may be the real truth about the 
origin of these New World cultures, it must be 
recollected that there still remains the question, 
scarcely less interesting, of their evolution, sup- 
posing that they were absolutely autochthonous. 
It is impossible to suppose that these people, 
the Mayas and Aztecs of Mexico and Central 
America, and the Incas and Aymaras and others 
of Peru, could have evolved their arts, architec- 
ture, and languages in the period of a few 
hundred years. Their carved-stone buildings 
could not have been designed and originated by 
a people sprung from barbarism in four or five 
centuries. It would be as reasonable to assert 
that British architects were the originators of 
1 Encyc. Brit., " Archaeology." 



RUINS OF QUIRIGUA, GUATEMALA. 
Stela 20 feet high, with hieroglyphics. 



WHENCE AND HOW 47 



Corinthian or Doric architecture, in which half 
the public buildings in England are expressed, 
and that they had evolved those styles since the 
time of William the Conqueror ! If the stone - 
shaping arts of Asia and the Old World took 
thousands of years to evolve, from the time when 
man first piled stone on stone to form a wall, 
must not these scarcely less skilful structures 
of the " new " world of America have taken a 
similar ratio of time to develop? If it be true, 
as observers assume, that the Maya buildings 
existing in Central America and the Inca 
buildings in Peru are not more than four or five 
hundred years old — and it seems a probably 
correct calculation — from what were they copied ? 
They must have been copied from preceding 
structures, either elaborated or inherited. If 
these arts were autochthonous in America, and 
have no connection with outside, then America 
must have been developing them from times con- 
temporary with Babylon and Egypt. The 
Quechua language of South America must have 
taken a thousand years to evolve, at least. 

Apart from more concrete consideration, we 
observe a marked similarity between these 
strange old lands of the New World and those of 
the Old World, as we have before reflected, with 
the authority of geology and geography, to bear 
it out. We have the same deserts and stony 
mountains where man is ever striving to gather 
grapes of thorns and figs of thistles ; the same 
patient people, tyrannised over by despotic 
potentates, the same pastoral pursuits, the same 



48 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



" aridian " culture and beating sun— that atmo- 
sphere of the wilderness once felt never forgotten. 
In both worlds the Sun God was the native 
image to which these poor ancients bowed 
down or were sacrificed, and idol, tomb, ruined 
temple, and pyramid cover both regions with 
their mute and mysterious presence. 

Having touched thus, lightly, upon the various 
aspects of the ethnic mysteries surrounding the 
Pacific world, we shall now enter upon a descrip- 
tion of the particular places concerned • not in 
great detail, for space would not suffice in a 
single volume, but broadly, inviting the reader 
to further study at the fountain-heads of infor- 
mation upon the subject. 




G.TC Bacon & Co.,Ltd..l27 Strand London. 



CHAPTER III 



THE TRAVELLER'S POINT OF VIEW 

A few points of geography — Coast of North and South 
America — The great Cordillera — Ice and fire — Compari- 
son with Bible lands — Seats of the ancient civilisations — 
Vast distances in prehistoric America — Arizona and 
California — Mexico, its people and railways — The re- 
publics of Central America — Good and bad qualities — 
Panama — Columbia and Ecuador — Peru, its people 
and mountains — Varied national traits — Chili and the 
Trans-Andine railway — Mongolian immigration in South 
America — A brief survey of the ancient ruins — Hints 
to travellers — Climate and equipment. 

The seats of these ancient civilisations of 
America, the Toltecs and Aztecs of Mexico, the 
Mayas of Central America, the Incas and pre- 
Incas of Peru, and others, were, it is to be 
recollected, separated by enormous distances, 
territories, consisting in many cases of almost in- 
accessible mountain ranges, sun-scorched deserts, 
and malarious forests— forming, indeed, the least 
habitable parts of the surface of the New World. 
As to the Pacific Islands, with their extraordinary 
monuments, they are separated by thousands of 
miles of open sea. 

The American coast, from where it leaves the 
fringe of Asia at Behring Strait, which divides 
the Old World from the New only by some fifty- 

4 49 



50 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



six miles of water, follows a series of gigantic 
curves and tangents for more than twelve 
thousand miles to Cape Horn. Except for a belt 
on each side of the equator, and its northern and 
southern extremities, in British Columbia and 
southern Chile respectively, this great coast is 
arid, and the traveller approaching it from the 
sea beholds little that would attract him. Dreary, 
sandy wastes, inhabited by little except seals and 
sea-birds, constitute the littoral of North and 
South America for thousands of miles along the 
coasts of California, Mexico, Peru, and Chile. 
There are but few natural harbours along this 
immense coast -line, so different in character to 
the Asiatic and European contours in this respect, 
and the really important havens in a length of 
five thousand miles may be counted on the five 
fingers of a man's hand. There are few quiet 
inlets, estuaries, or sheltered bays, such as man- 
kind loves for his maritime trafficking. 

If we cross these deserts, it is but to encounter 
the stern and inaccessible ridges of the Cordillera, 
the great mountain chains of North and South 
America which parallel the Pacific throughout 
these many thousand miles, and which Nature has 
broken down only here and there to form passes 
to the interior. Modern man has sown a few 
harbours and cities along this great littoral, and 
cultivated a few valleys where rivers run down 
to the sea from this mountain chain, but other- 
wise Nature reigns supreme, and even these few 
oases of humanity are overtopped by volcanoes 
and menaced by earthquake arid tidal waves. 



TRAVELLER'S POINT OF VIEW 51 



The ice-age and the fire -age are both at work 
still. A belt of craters in one place does but 
give place to a zone of glacier -bound peaks, and 
both are carving out the land, often to man's 
detriment. 

If primitive civilisation did indeed approach 
the twin -continents of America from the sea, 
it would have found at first sight little to allure 
it, to invite to the founding of a new. home : 
and we may ask if the peoples of Alaska and 
British Columbia had any connection with those 
of Mexico, or if the inhabitants of that land — the 
Aztecs and others — had anything in common with 
those of Peru and the other Andine countries, 
and this is later discussed. Even in these days 
of steamships British Columbia and Mexico 
know little of each other and nothing of Peru 
and Chile. 

In assuming the name " Secret of the Pacific " 
for this thesis, we shall, of course, not lose sight 
of the fact that some of these centres of ancient 
civilisation were not upon the Pacific slope or 
littoral. Some, such as part of the Yucatan 
remains, are upon the Atlantic side, or midway, 
upon the water-parting of the continent. All, 
however, seem traceable to an origin from or via 
the Pacific side. The great centre of pre- 
Hispanic civilisation in Mexico, that of the Aztecs, 
Toltecs, and others, was upon the great central 
tableland, the land of Anahuac, with its series 
of great lakes. The Mayas, whose was perhaps 
the highest civilisation attained in North America 
in pre-Columbian times, were disposed in the. 



52 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



singular peninsula of Yucatan, which juts out 
towards Europe, and in Central America, upon 
the water -parting and Pacific drainage area. In 
South America, the seat of the Incas and their 
forbears was upon the great plateau of Titicaca 
in the Andes, more than 12,500 feet above sea 
level, and divided from the Pacific by one of the 
main ranges of the Cordillera. Nevertheless, the 
Inca Empire was altogether a Pacific State. 

These two great centres of early American 
civilisation, Mexico and Peru, are more than 
three thousand miles apart, as regards their 
capital cities ; the whole of Central America, 
the Panama Isthmus, and the north of South 
America intervening. These are regions of so 
mountainous and inaccessible a character, in great 
part, as are scarcely encountered in any other part 
of the world, and I retain vivid impressions of 
journeys made in traversing them. Burning 
desert plains, over which the wearied horseman 
toils from sunrise to sunset, broken foothills, deep 
ravines, dense forests, rapid and treacherous 
rivers, which empty their torrential courses sud- 
denly into the sea without estuary or bar, pre- 
cipitous mountain passes overhung by glaciers, 
where the trail at times lies across the perpetual 
snow cap, and vast dreary, treeless punas or high 
tablelands, where the rarefied air of great eleva- 
tion reacts painfully upon the traveller's heart 
and lungs. Mules, Indians, mosquitoes, heat, 
cold, snow, rain, hard fare, sunburn, snow- 
blindness, mountain-sickness, semi -starvation, 
fever — all these the traveller must experience in 



TRAVELLER'S POINT OF VIEW 53 



the rugged lands discovered by Cortes and 
Pizarro, and there are few of these incidents of 
travel with which I have not made some 
acquaintance, in the more remote regions. 

For the sake of rapid comprehension, the 
following list of the main centres of these old 
civilisations of North and South America may 
be studied. In the first column appear the 
names of the country or State ; in the second the 
names of the former cultural people inhabiting 
them : — 



Country 

Alaska 

British Columbia 
Oregon and Washington 
California, Colorado . . . 
Utah, New Mexico ... 
Arizona 
Mexico 

Yucatan and ... 
Central America 

Columbia 

Ecuador 

Peru ... 
Bolivia... 
Chile 



Culture. 

■ No stone-shaping arts. 

The Cliff Dwellers, Irri- 
gationists, &c. 

Toltecs, Aztecs, &c. 

| Mayas, Quiches, &c. 

j Possible fusion between 
t Maya and Inca culture. 

I Incas and pre-Incas, &c. 



Those people who practised stone -shaping arts 
or building of stone structures, it is seen, cover a 
vast zone of territory, extending from north to 
south over yo° of latitude, or nearly five thousand 
miles. The two most famous centres at the time 
of the Conquest, those of Tenochtitlan, as 
Mexico City under the Aztecs was termed, and 
Cuzco, the ancient capital of the Incas in Peru, 



54 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



are, as stated, some three thousand miles apart. 
When we recollect, as before remarked, that the 
distance from the Euphrates to the Nile or from 
Chaldea to Egypt is only a thousand miles, we 
shall grasp something of the enormous distance 
over which the pre -historic American civilisation 
appears to have filtered. To traverse the rela- 
tively flat land, moreover, between the Euphrates 
and the Nile, such as was the theatre of the 
migrations of Abraham, would be a simple matter 
in comparison with an exodus along the rugged 
and inclement region of the Cordillera of North 
and South America, or, indeed, along their 
barren coasts. 

To-day the tide of travel grows apace, and it 
may be that the opening of the Panama Canal — 
predicted for 191 5 — will encourage the develop- 
ment of this mighty coast region and of the Ameri- 
can Pacific countries in general. But it will be 
inevitable, for a long time yet, that the traveller 
will be thrown very largely on his own resources— 
and in this will lie its charm to the adventurous. 
There are no fashionable tourist resorts, routes 
are not mapped out nor hotels recommended in 
these regions, nor are liveried guides and inter- 
preters attendant upon the foreigner as in the 
beaten tracks of the Old World. Of course the 
Pacific slope of the United States offers all that 
can be desired in the way of convenience to the 
traveller, and in Arizona or California he will 
have little cause for complaint concerning his 
accommodation. Further, it forms a scenic 
wonderland, without peer, of its special kind. 



TRAVELLER'S POINT OF VIEW 55 



In Spanish-America, however, which embodies 
all but a small part of the field, things are very 
different, and a brief sketch of the people and 
conditions of those lands will be in order here. 

Mexico is traversed by various railways, several 
main lines connecting the country with the 
railway system of the United States . These lines 
cross the great plateau of Mexico to the capital 
(elevation 7,500 feet) and are about four days' 
continuous rail journey from New York. This is, 
in the main, an arid region, although intersected 
by extremely rich valleys and irrigated areas, 
producing cotton, maguey, &c. ; whilst, of 
course, the fabulous mineral wealth of Mexico, 
in gold, silver, copper, and all else, lies mainly 
in the mountains which bound or intersect this 
great central tableland. On the Atlantic and 
Pacific slopes there are a few lines of railway 
connecting the central system with the seaports, 
and southwardly from the capital the railway 
system is connected with the trans -isthmian 
Tehuantepec railway. The slopes and littoral 
regions are tropical in character, yielding every 
tropical and sub-tropical product. Speaking 
generally, the climate of Mexico is healthy, and, 
indeed, in many places can only be described 
as delightful. In the lower districts and in the 
tropical forests, however, malaria is a serious 
matter. Yucatan and the more southern States 
are not connected with the railway system of the 
country, and are reached by sea. As regards the 
conveniences of travel, these, away from the rail- 
ways, are not to be expected, and the traveller 



56 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



must take careful measures for his food, accom- 
modation, and beasts of burden. As to personal 
security, bandits and highwaymen were practi- 
cally eliminated under the Diaz regimen, and 
doubtless the later revolutionary disturbances 
will calm down in time. In the more remote 
provinces, inhabited by half-civilised Indians 
under petty local authorities, certain precautions 
must be taken, but, as a whole, the prudent 
traveller may journey throughout the whole of 
Mexico in security of life and property. The 
Mexicans of all classes are courteous and 
generally well disposed towards foreigners. 

Yucatan is described briefly in the chapter 
dealing therewith. It is, of course, part of 
Mexico territorially, but merges in all other ways 
into Central America. 

The separate republics forming this division 
of America are more or less alike in physical 
character. They offer a wide range of climate 
and topography, and of the things of the plant 
and animal world, due to their highland and low- 
land structure, consequent upon the mountain 
range which traverses them. Politically they are 
backward, and financially they are notorious in 
the London " Market " for inability to meet the 
interest on loans. They are reached by sea either 
on the Atlantic or Pacific side, and in some cases 
are traversed by railway lines between the two 
waters. They offer in many respects much of 
interest to the traveller who can put up with the 
discomforts which Spanish-American travel ever 
carries with it, and as to their people, their defects 



TRAVELLERS POINT OF VIEW 57 

are counterbalanced often by good qualities, to 
which fair consideration must be shown. This 
region is undoubtedly one of the richest parts of 
the earth's surface, as regards its wealth and 
variety of natural resources, and its development 
belongs to the near future. 

The terminus of this region is marked by 
Panama, a centre now of general interest, and 
thence the great mainland of South America is 
reached, in Columbia and Ecuador. 

These two countries must be regarded as still 
very backward in their political and economical 
development, although full of alluring possibili- 
ties. From Guayaquil a railway now reaches 
Quito, the equator-situated capital of Ecuador. 
Extremely rich in agricultural possibilities and 
mineral products are these countries, and much 
may be expected of them when the requirements 
of commerce lay earnest hands upon them. At 
present their resources have been little more than 
played with. Of course it is to be recollected 
that these countries are extremely mountainous 
in character and correspondingly difficult of 
access as regards the interior, whilst as concerns 
their eastern or Amazonian and Orinoco water- 
sheds, much remains unexplored. 

Peru, following on Ecuador, has a coast -line 
of more than 1,400 miles, and is described in the 
special chapters devoted thereto. It suffers, from 
an economical point of view, in that its interior is 
cut off from the littoral by the huge ranges, 
double and treble, of the x\ndes, which mountains 
in Peru and Bolivia come to their greatest 



58 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



development. The existence of the Andes, how- 
ever, is the cause of Peru's great wealth in natural 
resources, of minerals, &c, and other com- 
pensating circumstances. The people of Peru, 
the modern Spanish-American governing race, 
are intelligent but ease-loving, and although full 
of good intentions, are at times marked by a lack 
of sincerity in their commercial and political deal- 
ings, and inability to carry out the development 
of their great heritage. Two main lines of 
railway reach the interior of the country from the 
coast, crossing the Andes at great elevations ; 
but so far they are isolated from any of the other 
railway systems of South America, and conse- 
quently the country is only to be reached by sea. 

Somewhat similar conditions prevail in Chile, 
although the Chilians are a far more energetic 
and progressive race than their neighbours. This 
country, although of enormous length, is con- 
tained in the strip between the Andes and the 
sea, and does not extend beyond the mountains. 
Nevertheless, great mineral and agricultural 
wealth is possessed by Chile, and the only trans- 
continental railway in South America is hers, 
in conjunction with Argentina. The archaeo- 
logical region, however, which we are called on 
to tread ceases in Northern Chile, extending 
little beyond the southern limits of the Titicaca 
plateau . 

A few remarks upon more intimate matters 
of life and travel in Latin America may not be 
out of place here, written from the point of view 
of considerable experience of my own. 




z 



z 
< 



z 



i 



TRAVELLER'S POINT OF VIEW 59 

As soon as we enter a Spanish-American 
: capital life takes on an atmosphere and colour 
which are not found elsewhere. We are amid a 
people more quixotic than ever were the nation 
of their forefathers of Spain. The air is full of 
personality and contrast. On every hand are 
presidents, generals, Cabinets, banquets, oratory, 
civil and military fanfare. Monuments of public 
heroes from Bolivar onwards, set amid palms 
and fountains, with a surrounding medium of 
men in top-hats and frock-coats, each a potential 
president or prospective or ex-Cabinet minister, 
and ladies whose outdoor apparel would in some 
cases outshine a Parisian ballroom ; sunshine and 
blue skies, the strains of music in shady Alame- 
das ; evidences of wealth, or pretensions of wealth ; 
literature and heroics, or pretension of such ; 
" liberty " and — no, not equality, for nowhere 
are the great gulfs of class so firmly fixed ; but 
all, whether reality, whether pretension, forming 
a picture which will not easily fade from the mind. 
If we are travellers of note or persons of import- 
ance in any sphere, this atmosphere will become 
intensified greatly. We shall almost despair at 
first of the courtesy and " correctness " of every 
one with whom we come in contact, whether 
it be the ceremony of entering a doorway, with its 
insistence on our precedence, whether the toast 
in our honour at dinner or lunch, mingled with 
flattering attributes which will bring the blush 
to the Anglo-Saxon cheek. Often these matters 
will fill us with genuine pleasure. The country 
j is not all pretension, the bright smiles of women 



60 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



not all conventional. Much of it arises from a 
desire to please, from the love of the pleasurable 
in life, and a desire to share it with us ; from 
the strong trait of hospitality which is so pleasing 
a feature of Latin America, upon which the 
inevitable inroads of commercialism have now 
begun to tell. Above all, the fact that we come 
from a far-off land, and are of a famous race, 
will heighten the warmth of our reception. 

The keynote to the character of the people 
of the Latin -iVmerican world is the word 
caballero. A caballero, as every one knows, is 
a gentleman, literally a horseman, which explains 
its philosophy and derivation. Every man 
desires to be considered a caballero. It is a 
legacy from his Spanish ancestry, a heritage of 
Don Quixote, at which we of the ruder Anglo- 
Saxon world will not scoff. The spirit of noblesse 
oblige which the Spanish Conquistadores be- 
queathed and the Spaniard of whatever class 
strives to uphold, is extremely grateful after the 
blatant discourtesy which too often is mistaken 
for equality in the United States, and to a less 
degree in the British colonies. 

Notwithstanding what has been said earlier in 
this book about natural obstacles in these coun- 
tries above and below the equator, the difficul- 
ties and dangers of travel in Spanish-America 
have often been exaggerated. Wars, revolutions, 
fevers, snakes, assassination, and highway 
robberies bulk largely in the mind of the pros- 
pective traveller — an obsession which has been 
unwarrantably acute. The experienced traveller, 



TRAVELLER'S POINT OF VIEW 61 



in looking back upon his wanderings and sojourn- 
rngs in these lands, will find that two facts stand 
out in his memory. One is that the difficulties 
of travel in wild countries are really less than 
pictured before he attempted to overcome them. 
The other is that the necessity for carrying arms 
is in great part an illusion. The traveller who 
is a gentleman will find that his best weapons 
are tact and sincerity, straightforwardness and 
reserve. It has been claimed for the mariner 
that a special Providence watches over him, but 
the traveller in the wild places of the earth will 
find a similar philosophy capable of sustaining 
him. 

No feature of Spanish-American travel stands 
out in the traveller's recollection more strongly 
than the mules, the arrieros or mule drivers, the 
mountain road, and all the lore and incident con- 
nected therewith. For in these generally moun- 
tainous countries railways are few ; coaches or 
diligencias untrustworthy, and the sturdy and 
patient saddle -animals hold their own as means 
of conveyance of men and merchandise over 
thousands and thousands of miles throughout 
these mighty Cordilleras and boundless river 
basins, forests, and plains. Indeed, it may occur 
to the traveller at times that the near future will 
carry us up to the epoch of air-journeying with- 
out an intermediary between the saddle and the 
aeroplane, in these inaccessible regions. 

The popular idea of the climate of Spanish 
America is generally somewhat vague, like the 
popular geographical conceptions concerning it, 



62 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



and it is usually pictured as a more or less 
torrid region. This of course is true for 
large portions of it, especially such as the 
coast of Brazil, the Isthmus of Panama, 
and the region bordering on the Gulf of 
Mexico. But in reality the range of climatic 
conditions is extremely varied, more so possibly, 
or at least as concerns South America, than any 
other continent on the globe. In those countries 
traversed by the Andes the traveller, within the 
span of a single day's journey may experience 
temperatures ranging from tropic heat to Arctic, 
or rather Antarctic, cold. It has fallen in the 
scope of my journeys on occasions to pass from 
semi-tropic valleys where oranges and lemons 
flourish to the bleak uplands where neither corn 
nor timber grows, and indeed to the limit of the 
perpetual snowfields, in the course of one day's 
ride. This matter of climate is naturally of im- 
portance in determining various conditions of 
travel, and the traveller, if he has not taken them 
sufficiently into consideration as regards his 
equipment, may suffer discomfort and inconveni- 
ence or possibly more serious results thereby. 
It is also to be recollected that in the higher 
regions of these mountainous lands such as on 
the great Mexican plateau or the high punas or 
tablelands of the Andes, the diurnal changes of 
temperature are very marked. These matters 
determine questions of clothing and equipment. 
Blankets under the saddle may always be 
carried ; they both ease the burden on the animal 
and keep dry during storms. A folding cot and 



TRAVELLER'S POINT OF VIEW 63 



a rubber cape are indispensable adjuncts in most 
regions away from railways, and for well -filled 
saddlebags of light food the traveller will often 
have occasion to return hearty thanks to Rrovi- 
dence. All horse equipment is far better 
obtained in the country itself rather than taken 
from home. It is more suitable, and cheaper. 

Thus it is seen how vast and varied is this 
New World of America, especially those regions 
that look towards the Pacific. What is to be its 
future? Is Europe to continue its colonisation 
and development, or will it be colonised — either 
under peaceful immigration or by conquest as 
time goes on — by the teeming millions of the 
Mongolian world of Asia? Such a development 
is not outside the range of possibility. Is the 
Spanish element which so far has peopled it too 
feeble to finish the work it began four hundred 
years ago? Will the European nations exhaust 
their powers of colonisation or reproduction in 
this epoch of rampant commercialism and " race- 
suicide " ? 

It is not within the scope of this work to enter 
into that question. We are concerned here with 
the past, and with the remains of ancient empires . 
Whether in South America or in North America 
where these old civilisations flourished, we shall 
constantly be reminded of the existence of former 
peoples. Here they lived, loved, wept, fought, 
died. Here are burial-mounds and mausoleums 
of departed populations, rock tombs and 
mummy cellars. Here are ruined hilltop for- 
tresses, like castles of unreal romance, yet 



64 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



stranger than fiction. In Inca kitchens, whose 
hearthstones were cold ages before Columbus 
sailed, my men have cooked the evening meal, 
whilst the winds murmured past outside and 
the wearied mules champed their fodder in the 
courtyard of some bygone Andine potentate. 

In some regions we shall encounter abandoned 
settlements of pueblos and gentiles on every hand, 
community-houses and watch-towers set amid 
sandy desert or snow-crowned cordillera, regions 
where men dwelt in fear or security, where 
tribes and chieftains battled like those of the 
Holy Land for the possession of the soil, and 
where primitive sentinels watched vigilantly, 
perched on lofty cliffs, guarding the approaches 
to water -holes and fertile valleys. Here are 
mountain roads over which prehistoric Aztec or 
Inca postmen toiled— mail carriers in active 
working long before Europe dreamt of such a 
service, but which existed in Asia. 

Our horses' hoofs will rattle among the frag- 
ments of pottery of a bygone people, whose 
skulls, bones, mummies will be our constant com- 
panions, and whose ancient temples and ghostly 
habitations will serve as our abiding-places. 



CHARTER IV 



NORTHERN STEPPING-STONES 

The 'Eskimos — An important region — Behring Sea culture- 
area — A link between Asia and America — Language — 
Art — Mongol origin — Boats and navigation — The Aleu- 
tians — Customs and religions of the Eskimos — The road 
from Asia — Siberia — Neolithic man — The Hydah Indians 
— The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway — Bancroft's des- 
cription — Hydah carvings — Totem poles — Canoes — 
Inter-continental navigation — The Nootkas — Native 
customs — The Apaches — California to-day- — Behring 
Strait — The " Miocene Bridge " — Other early land con- 
nections with America — Passing reflections. 

Before entering upon the more interesting 
field that the civilisations of early Mexico, Peru, 
and Australasia offer, we must consider some 
humbler peoples who form links in the geo- 
graphical and ethnological chain which, begin- 
ning at that interlocking fringe of Asia and 
America of Behring Strait, we shall follow around 
the rim of the Pacific Ocean. 

The first people to occupy our attention are 
the Eskimos, those races which, dwelling from 
Greenland right across North America along the 
Arctic shores, extend into Asia across Behring 
Strait, and so positively are inhabitants of both 
continents . 

The portion of America in its extreme north- 

5 65 



66 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



western point has been shown by recent investi- 
gations — particularly those carried on by the 
Jessup expedition of 1897 to 1902 in that region 
and among the aborigines of the Asiatic fringe 
of the north-eastern coast facing America — to be 
of great importance to the ethnologists. The 
study of this region, which may be termed the 
" Behring Sea culture area," reveals that there 
have been transmissions of culture from one con- 
tinent to the other, and it is even stated that 
" the Asiatic Eskimo is of American origin, 
having come originally from his home beyond 
the Mackenzie river." At an early period these 
people interrupted the intercourse which existed 
between the Siberian and the Indian tribes, on 
their respective sides of the strait, an inter- 
course which has left cultural traits in this area 
in the fringes of both continents. In mythology, 
language, and certain arts, customs, and beliefs 
it is established that a unity of culture exists 
embracing the natives of North-eastern Siberia 
and the Indians of the North Pacific coast of 
America, and this fact is one of the most im- 
portant which has been established in recent 
ethnological research. 

The language of the Eskimos, with the varia- 
tion only of dialects, is one from Greenland to 
Eastern Siberia, and differs entirely from the 
whole group of European languages. The 
Eskimos have not, of course, any literature, but 
they etch on ivory the subjects of their legends, 
and have a considerable folklore, in which they 
must be regarded as intelligent. 



NORTHERN STEPPING-STONES 67 



The Eskimos are separated by most authorities 
as a people apart from the American Indians, 
and are even regarded as " a distinct sub -race of 
the Mongolo-Malay " 1 by some. Indeed, a 
good deal of controversy has centred about the 
" Mongolian " origin, a supporter of which was 
the eminent Virchow. This subject is further 
discussed in a subsequent chapter. Formerly the 
inhabitants of the whole Hyperborean sea-coast, 
from the Mackenzie River to Queen Charlotte 
Island — the interior being entirely unknown — 
were denominated Eskimos, and were of sup- 
posed Asiatic origin. 2 This is borne out by later 
writers, one of whom considers that the Labrador 
Eskimos are " physically related to the Mongols 
of Asia." 3 

The boats of these northern people, in the 
region of the strait and of the Aleuts of the 
'Aleutian Islands, are formed of a skeleton of 
wood covered with sealskins, and they carry 
fifteen or twenty persons, and in a storm two 
or three are lashed together. The small kyak 
is decked or covered with skins except the hole 
filled by the navigator, and no water can enter. 
Astonishing evolutions are performed by the 
kyak rower, who at will can turn his craft com- 
pletely over in an aquatic somersault and right 
it with his paddle. Sails are used by the large 

1 Dr. Hrdlicka, " Handbook of American Indians North of 
Mexico." 

2 Bancroft. 

3 " Among the Eskimos of Labrador," Dr. Hutton, 1912, 
London, 



68 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



boats, and the Aleutians put to sea with them 
in all weathers. Communications are constantly 
carried on between the natives of this fringe of 
Asia and America, and it is easy to see that 
prehistoric immigrants of whatever race or cult 
would have had little difficulty at whatever period 
in being ferried over from the Old World to the 
New. That such ferryings did occur in those 
periods when Asia " boiled over " it seems diffi- 
cult to doubt. 

Some of the customs of these northern savages 
are, moreover, sufficiently bestial to have been 
derived from those people whose doings brought 
down wrath upon Sodom and Gomorrah, or 
at least so they are described by Bancroft, 1 
who quotes from numerous authors. Never- 
theless they are not without religion, and 
they possess a native animism, embodying a 
vague belief in good and evil spirits, a heaven 
and a hell. Nominally, to-day they are nearly 
all Christians. Among their native religious rites 
is the " sun-dance." The Eskimo snow huts, 
made in blocks with courses inclining inwards 
to a beehive shape, are reminiscent of the adobe 
huts of similar form of the Indians of Lake 
Titicaca, in Peru ; and, indeed, of such structures 
in stone in Asia Minor. 

The road from Asia, that is, from India, China, 
Mongolia, which in imagination we might lay 
down for wanderers from those regions to have 
passed over on their supposed way to America — 
unconscious, no doubt, of their destination, and 
1 Bancroft, " Native Races," vol. i., p. 82, &c. 



NORTHERN STEPPING-STONES 69 



occupying unknown stages of time — might lie 
along the great plateau of East Siberia or 
possibly along the coast. The mountain ranges 
trend north-eastwardly, and this would seem to 
direct the line of least resistance towards Behring 
Strait. Indeed, the vast plateau of Central Asia 
stretches from the Himalayas to Behring Strait. 
The remains of Neolithic man are extremely 
plentiful upon the shores of the lakes which 
filled the depressions in the Lacustrine period. 
Numerous tumuli, furnaces, and other remains 
give evidence of a population much more numer- 
ous formerly. At the time of the great migra- 
tions in Asia from east to west it is probable 
that people were forced towards the northern 
borders of the great plateau, and from there 
pushed into Siberia. These people must have 
been forced still farther towards the barren north 
by succeeding waves of migration, where they 
" melted away," it is stated. Numerous remains 
of the Bronze period are scattered all over 
Southern Siberia, of those early people who 
excelled in bronze, gold, and silver work, orna- 
ments and implements often polished, which show 
considerable taste, but a people to whom iron 
was unknown. Their irrigated fields covered 
wide areas in the fertile tracts. It is not here 
asserted that these matters form links in the 
supposed Asia-American chain, but they bear 
upon it. The Siberian region is in great part 
unknown and invites fuller investigation. 

A " striking physical likeness " has been 
spoken of as between the Lolos of the Upper 



70 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



Yangtse, of Tibetan origin, and the North 
American Indian ; which might " serve to link 
the plateau of Central Asia with the plains of 
North America."i 

Behring Strait, which divides Siberia from 
Alaska— fifty-six miles of water broken by some 
small islands — is generally covered with fog ; 
although the Siberian coast is visible from Cape 
Prince of Wales, the north-westernmost point 
of America, on clear days. 2 On the summit of 
this cape there are seen some " curious stone 
erections, moss-grown, dilapidated, and appa- 
rently of great age, tomb-like constructions pr 
pillars of stone about 10 feet high, said to have 
been made by the Eskimos to represent men, and 
thus to deceive an enemy," 3 which latter state- 
ment, however, is not vouched for. Possibly 
further discoveries in Alaska will bring to light 
other matters of interest concerning early build- 
ing there. 

Whilst we do not find stone monuments north 
of the culture area of the Cliff Dwellers of 
Arizona and Colorado, which we shall presently 
consider, some of the Indian tribes of the great 
north-west have their place here in considering 
the possible links between Asia and Mexico 
via the north. The Hydah Indians are prob- 
ably the most noteworthy, originally occupying 
Prince of Wales Island, in Alaska, and Queen 

1 w Chinese Frontier of India" : Archibald Rose, Geographical 
Journal, March, 1912. 

2 " Paris to New York by Land," H. de Windt. 

3 Ibid. 



NORTHERN STEPPING-STONES 71 



Charlotte Islands and the adjacent coast of 
British Columbia for one hundred miles inland, 
between 5 5 0 and 5 2° of north latitude. In this 
enormous region, so little understood by the 
ordinary reader, great changes are occurring. 
The seaport of Prince Rupert, the terminus of the 
new Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, 1 lies here, 
the great line whose opening is expected to 
precede that of the Panama Canal. Modern 
commerce will soon send its echoes resounding 
through this region of forest, fiord, and moun- 
tain, of which Bancroft 2 wrote beautifully, 
depicting that time when those peoples were 
least known to Europeans ; when throughout the 
region of Columbia — that is, British Columbia 
and Oregon — 

" Nature's wild magnificence was yet fresh, 
primeval forests unprofaned, lakes and rivers, 
and rolling plains unswept ; it was when 
countless villages dotted the luxuriant valleys ; 
when from the warriors' camp-fire the curling 
smoke never ceased to ascend nor the sounds 
of song and dance to be heard ; when bands of 
gaily dressed savages roamed over every hillside ; 
when humanity unrestrained vied with bird and 
beast in the exercise of liberty absolute. This 
is no history. Alas ! they have none ; it is 
but a sun-picture, and to be taken correctly 
must be taken quickly. Nor need we pause to 
look back through the dark vista of unwritten 

1 See my " The Great Pacific Coast." 

2 " Native Races of the Pacific States of North America," 
London, 1875. 



NORTHERN STEPPING-STONES 73 



from the ground, are some of the matters 
noted by early travellers among these people, as 
quoted by Bancroft. The Hydahs are noted for 
their carved totem poles, as are the Tlinkits of 
the same coast, and for their skill in the construc- 
tion of their various implements, particularly for 
sculptures in stone and ivory and slate carvings. 
" The supporting posts of their probable temples 
were carved into human figures and all painted 
red and black, but the sculpture of these people 
is superior to their painting," is the statement 
about them from Mackenzie's " Voyages." They 
were noted for the beauty and size of their cedar 
canoes and their skill in carving. " These canoes 
are dug out of cedar logs and are sometimes 
60 feet long, 6| wide, and deep, accommodat- 
ing one hundred men. The prow and stern are 
raised and often gracefully curved like a swan's 
neck, with a monster's head at the extremity. 
Boats of the better class have their exteriors 
carved and painted, with the gunwale inlaid in 
some cases with otter teeth, and they are impelled 
rapidly and safely over the often rough waters 
of the coast inlets, by shovel-shaped paddles, and 
when on shore are piled up and covered with mats 
against the rays of the sun." 

We see how navigation naturally develops 
among a people inhabiting an indented coast, as 
against that of an open surf -beat shore. The 
early Mexicans and Peruvians had no such 
canoes. Rafts and balsas, either of reeds or 
inflated skins, were their only craft, as described 
later. The same may be said for the whole 



74 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



barren coast of California and, indeed, of Mexico. 
Of course, the Peruvians of the coast had no 
timber of this character, for the coast of Peru 
is treeless absolutely. This beautiful cedar of 
North America lends itself readily to working, 
as the traveller who has had occasion to build 
rafts to cross rivers in that part of the world 
will recollect. In the rivers that traverse the 
dense forests and swamps on the northern shores 
of Lake Michigan, I observed with interest the 
facility with which cedar logs were fashioned into 
rafts, secured with hardwood pegs, improvising 
a craft to cross the streams. 

Fleets of the Hydah canoes engage in trade 
between the islands and the mainland, and it is 
not difficult to imagine that a people with such 
powers of coastal navigation might be allied with 
races who would have traversed Behring Strait, 
or passed along the natural stepping-stones of 
the Aleutian Islands from Asia to America. 
" One of these canoes easily distanced the 
champion boat of the American Navy, belonging 
to the man-of-war Saranac," 

Of similar characteristics are the Nootkas, 
farther south, and of Vancouver Island. Their 
boats were dug-outs from pine-trees, and held 
forty or fifty men. " The implement used for 
weaving differed in no apparent respect from 
the rude loom of the days of the Pharaohs/' 
" They show themselves ingenious sculptors. 
They not only preserve with great exactness the 
general character of their own faces, but finish 
the more minute parts, with a degree of accuracy 



NORTHERN STEPPING-STONES 75 



and neatness "... says Cook, in his " Voyage 
to the Pacific." " The Indian mode of dancing 
bears a strange resemblance to that in use among 
the Chinese." 1 

The opening up of the great north-west of 
America, British Columbia and Alaska, will 
doubtless give an impetus to the study of these 
northern people and of the Eskimos, which latter, 
as stated, occupy the Atlantic seaboard from 
Eastern Greenland along the whole of the 
northern shore of America, and across Behring 
Strait to the Asiatic shore. Of the numerous 
tribes of the Pacific slope of America north of 
Mexico it is unnecessary to speak here. In 
Central California the poorest and lowest races 
of all existed, undistinguished by any arts save 
the most primitive. " Yet the most exquisite 
and artistic basketry in the world comes from 
an absolutely uncivilised tribe in California." It 
is to be recollected that this is by nature an 
arid region, timberless and largely waterless, 
where the raw material of life was scarce. 

The cruel, treacherous, bloodthirsty, abomin- 
able, and thievish Apache, the veritable devil 
of those wild plains, inhabited the region imme- 
diately above, and partly within what is now 
Mexico. " This was a spot," said an old Indian 
fighter of the United wStates to me, as we 
journeyed along through that strange region of 
sand and sage-brush — not on horseback, how- 
ever, but on the back platform of a Pullman 
car — " this was the spot where one of the early 
1 Bancroft, ante ) who quotes from other authorities. 



76 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



caravans was overwhelmed by Apaches, and men, 
mutilated and disfigured,, were found staked out 
on the burning plains afterwards — mutilated in 
that awful way which was known as the work of 
the Apache ! Small wonder that this particular 
breed of " varmint " was hunted down and often 
shot on sight. " Here/' says Bancroft, " it is 
that we first encounter thieving as a profession 
among these Western nations.'" When we regard 
the orange-groves, the flower gardens and pas- 
tures, the brimming irrigation canals, the elegant 
houses and motor-cars of the Anglo-American 
people who dwell in the transformed California 
and Arizona, we shall indeed mark the contrast. 

How involved is the question of man's early 
existence in America is shown even in a 
very recent survey of the subject, which it 
will be well to quote here, although involving- 
some repetition. We are reminded that *' the 
absence of anthropoid apes from America, at 
any period of the world's history, clearly pre- 
cludes the possibility of man's having originated 
independently in the New World.'' 1 It is argued 
that the population of America must have come 
from the Old World, and that as any land-bridge 
across the mid-Atlantic, or any connection of 
South America with the Antarctic continent could 
not have lasted until the human period, there 
remain only the two probable routes — of a farther 
extension of land between North America and 
Northern Europe on the one hand, and that of 
the Behring Strait land-bridge on the other. It 
1 " The Wanderings of Peoples," Haddon. 1911. 




To face p. 76. 



NORTHERN STEPPING-STONES 77 



is held that in late Tertiary times there was a 
land-bridge connecting North-West Europe with 
Greenland, and that the reindeer passed there- 
over during early glacial times. Some authori- 
ties maintain that this land connection remained 
until the glacial age had passed. Again, some 
authorities consider that until after the glacial 
period the Pacific was open to the Pole, that the 
far north-west of America had not yet risen from 
the waves, so that the Behring Straits land-bridge 
and the Aleutian Island stepping-stones would 
not have been there to help them. In that case 
" the first inhabitants of America certainly did 
not get there in this way, for by that time the 
bones of many generations were already bleach- 
ing on the soil of the New World." 1 Thus it 
is that even geology cannot give us a final word 
as to the existence of this " Miocene Bridge." 

Of the early Norse immigration we have 
scarcely spoken. There is no doubt that this did 
occur. Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace supports this, 
amongst other authorities, and in one of his 
letters to me says : " The early Norse immigra- 
tion, or a still earlier one, by which man entered 
America, perhaps accounts for the finer races 
of tall Indians, with long, flowing hair and 
aquiline noses, now almost extinct." 2 The recent 
comprehensive work of Dr. Nansen also discusses 
these early matters. 3 

The accounts of most of the northern tribes 

1 Haebler, " The World's History," 1901. 

2 December, 191 1. 

3 " In Northern Mists." 



78 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



of America, whilst giving place to their virtues 
and glimmerings of art and reason, are full 
of descriptions of abominable customs. In 
these sexual matters figure largely always ; 
and the way in which many savage tribes 
mutilated and deformed the organs of their 
bodies, by perforating their lips, noses, and ears, 
and hanging heavy objects therein, is among the 
most extraordinary attributes of primitive life. 
It might seem to bear out the theory of some 
mythologists that there was a period in the 
world's history when all mankind was mad ! 

It is pleasing to turn from the people who 
dwelt in very temporary structures, and of very 
" unsettled " habits, to encounter races who at 
least built stone walls and, farther on, temples, 
although the reflection will not fail to occur to 
us how, all over the world, man could build 
the most exquisite structures of stone and yet 
be absolutely barbarous and bloodthirsty to his 
kind — customs, indeed, which have not yet dis- 
appeared from the world. With these reflections 
we approach the region of the Cliff Dwellers — a 
sort of preface to Mexico. We shall not forget, 
however, the enormous extent of the territory 
which, with these brief references, we have 
traversed from Behring Strait to the warm 
climate of these " aridian " cultures, a distance 
of some five thousand miles. 



CHAPTER V 



THE CLIFF DWELLERS 

Western America—Colorado, Utah, and Arizona — California 
— The great American desert — The Rocky Mountains — 
Old and new civilisations — The Puye ruins — Mesa 
Verde National Park — Remarkable structures — Unique 
situations — Subterranean chambers — Cliff temples and 
palaces — Connection with the Aztecs — Creation legends 
— Native story of evolution — The Pueblos — Pueblo 
pottery — Prayers for rain — Delta-lands — Prehistoric 
irrigation channels — The Swastika in America — Casas 
Grandes — Frontier with Mexico. 

" From some remote and unknown ancestry there 
grew to being in the south-west of what is now 
the United States of America a people with 
certain attributes of civilisation, whose mural 
remains have aroused the intense interest of the 
archaeologist." These are the ruins of the famous 
Cliff Dwellers and prehistoric irrigationists en- 
countered in certain parts of the States of 
Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona. 

Much has been written concerning these 
remarkable ruins and the people whose habita- 
tions they formed, and although nothing was 
known of the Cliff dwellings before the latter 
half of the last century, much light has been 
shed upon them by the scientific investigations 

79 



80 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



of recent years. The United States Government 
has taken an interest in their preservation and 
study, and some of the principal groups of 
ruins and the territories surrounding them are 
now held as national property. Further, the 
growth of settled conditions among the people 
of these States, formed from a constant influx of 
immigrants both from the eastern part of the 
Republic and from Europe, has caused these 
unique ruins to be held in value and pre- 
served as objects of interest for the citizens of 
the American West. In fact, the region has 
become a national asset of some importance, and 
what was formerly an almost inaccessible desert 
is now easily reached by railway. 

This part of the United States is of a character 
familiar to the traveller on the western slope of 
America, North or South. That is to say, it is 
a region of scanty rainfall, arid, consisting of 
vast stretches of desert broken by stony moun- 
tain ridges and deep canons. These features 
alternate with valleys which, under the influence 
of irrigation and the science and energy of 
modern farming, have become centres of beauty 
and produce, to which the generally cloudless 
sky, dry climate, and wonderfully clear atmo- 
sphere add that peculiar charm which these 
regions possess, and which, once experienced, 
is never forgotten. 

The early history of this part of the United 
States is a veritable romance. It is part of the 
Americas which became known by Spanish ex- 
plorers and fell under the sway of Spain. 



THE CLIFF DWELLERS 81 



Indeed, it has retained, in every point of topo- 
graphical nomenclature to-day, the romantic 
stamp of Spain. It was, however, the lure of 
mineral wealth and the fables of Golden Cities 
which drew the Conquistadores on. Of archae- 
ology they cared little ; and it is due to their 
successors, the Anglo-Americans, that exact 
knowledge was obtained of the Cliff Dwellers. 

It cannot be held to be out of place to con- 
sider this ancient culture area within the caption 
of the Secret of the Pacific. It is true that the 
region containing it is a long way from the 
Pacific Coast, but it is tributary thereto, the rivers 
traversing it being affluents, in the main, of the 
mighty Colorado, which drains the southern por- 
tion of the enormous arid basin of the " Great 
American Desert " lying between the Rocky 
Mountains and the Sierra Nevadas of California 
and Oregon. The Colorado, one of the most 
remarkable rivers in the world, after its two- 
thousand mile course, empties into the Pacific 
Ocean, or rather the Gulf of California, in 
Mexican territory ; and to this great river and 
its Euphrates -like delta we shall have occasion 
to refer later. 

Nothing impressed itself more upon me in this 
region than the way in which the new civilisa- 
tion of the United States jostles the remains of 
these ancient peoples and of their successors, 
the Spaniards. There is no half-way house 
between the antique and romantic on the one 
hand, and the new — often brutally new— phase 
of American commercialism on the other. Here 

6 



82 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



the modern American tourist or commercialist 
rubs shoulders with the blanketed and sandalled 
Indian. The rapid progress of a mechanical age 
is lapping the bases of these sandstone cliffs and 
ancient seats of a community no less industrious 
and worthy, perhaps, in its own time and way. 

A glance at the map of that part of the United 
States shows that the boundaries of Colorado, 
New Mexico, Utah, and Arizona meet in recti- 
linear form just to the west of the Rocky Moun- 
tains ; and within a comparatively short radius 
from this point the principal groups of ruins 
of the Cliff dwellings are situated. The traveller 
can approach them with ease by means of that 
remarkable scenic line the Denver and Rio 
Grande Railway from the city of Denver, capital 
of the State of Colorado, running southwards to 
Santa Fe, in New Mexico, and then westward, 
forming part of the general railway system of 
the United States. 

The Puye ruins are twelve miles from the 
station of Espanola, in New Mexico, and slightly 
to the south the Santa Fe line brings the traveller 
within twenty or thirty miles of Pajarito, Otowi, 
Tsankawi, Navawi, and Rito de los Frijoles. 
These important groups are now embodied in 
what is termed the Pajarito National Park. Still 
in the same State, at Aztec, upon a branch line, 
and about two miles from the railway, are the 
Aztec ruins, forming part of the immediate region 
of the great Mesa Verde National Park, contain- 
ing the important Cliff dwellings of the Mesa 
Verde, best reached from Mancos Station, over 



THE CLIFF DWELLERS 83 



the border-line in the State of Colorado, in which 
this park is situated. The term " park," it is to 
be recollected, is employed simply to designate 
what has been declared a national or public pos- 
session. About forty-five miles from Dolores 
Station, also in Colorado, are canons containing 
other groups of Cliff dwellings — the Holly, Yellow 
Jacket, Hovenweep, and Cannon Ball Canons, 1 
whilst 150 miles away from this station the 
singular natural bridges of Utah are reached, 
as also the Utah ruins. 

The most important, and in some respects 
most remarkable, seat of these early inhabitants 
is the Mesa Verde. The Mesa (Spanish) is a 
tableland through which the Mancos River has 
carved a great canon with numerous lateral 
ravines, and here ruined towns and buildings 
exist in situations so weird and remarkable as are 
scarcely to be encountered in any other part of 
the world. Round and square towers, community 
houses, walls and fortifications, subterranean 
chambers and sanctuaries, built under the roofs 
of mighty caverns carved by torrential erosion in 
ages past, form a spectacle unique in the world's 
archaeology. Chief among these is the famous 
Cliff Palace of which an illustration is here 
given. The region of the Mesa is formed of a 
great sandstone strata, which has been eroded into 
these fantastic gorges and caverns, presenting 
from the distance a flat-topped tableland. The 
Mancos River, coming from the north-east, 
enters the canon bearing its name and flows into 
1 See " Handbook of American Indians/' Washington, 1907. 



84 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



the San Juan River, a tributary of the great Rio 
Colorado. 

The Pajarito plateau, a formation of vast age 
whose soft rock has been sculptured by the 
erosine action of wind and water into masses 
which may be described as geological islands, 
occupies an area of perhaps five hundred square 
miles on the west side of the Rio Grande, and 
on the tops of these mesas and in the faces of 
the cliffs are the remains of almost countless 
groups of the old Community Houses. Those on 
the mesa tops were typically arranged in quad- 
rangles of four-terraced houses, surrounding a 
squarish court, which could be entered only by 
a single narrow passage-way. These quad- 
rangular structures consisted of many rooms 
arranged in series, side by side, and also in 
terraces to the height of several stories. The 
great community house at Puye must have been 
four stories high, and contained from ten to twelve 
hundred rooms, whilst against the cliffs below 
were built extensive villages that housed hun- 
dreds of people. The entire plateau from the 
Chama river south for forty miles, is covered 
with similar remains. The Cliff Houses alone, or 
rather the cliffs containing them, if placed in a 
single line, would extend for over one hundred 
miles. 1 The culmination of all the ancient Cliff 
cities of this region is to be seen in the Rito 
de los Frijoles. Here the ruins are built in a 

1 " Ancient Ruins of the South-West, " E. L. Hewett, 
Archaeological Institute of America ; a pamphlet issued by 
the Denver and Rio Grand Railway. 



THE CLIFF DWELLERS 



85 



canon, 500 feet deep, but as difficult of access as 
the mesa fortresses last described ; and scattered 
along this gorge are fifteen villages. This 
ancient community bore the name of Tyuonyi, 
and its centre was the great community house, 
roughly circular, three stories high, in terraces, 
and containing originally eight hundred or nine 
hundred rooms, its inner court being entered by 
a single narrow passage. Another group of 
ancient towns is that of the Chaco Canon in New 
Mexico — great houses, standing in the open, 
some five stories high, of sandstone blocks, in 
some cases arranged in courses of varying thick- 
ness so as to produce decorative effects. The 
best known of these unprotected structures is 
Pueblo Bonito, a huge building five stories high, 
semi-circular in form, its walls still standing to 
a height of over 40 feet. Other ruins surround 
it, all in the midst of a desolate plain of the 
Navajo Desert, almost devoid of water now, and 
incapable of supporting any population except 
wandering Navajo Indians. One of the greatest 
of these ancient ruins is that near Aztec, similar 
to that of the Chaco Canon. This is a community 
house, which must have contained several hun- 
dred rooms in several stories, how many it is not 
possible to determine. Some of the rooms are 
still completely preserved, and floor, walls, and 
ceilings and fireplaces exactly in the condition 
left by their ancient dwellers, the timbers used 
in construction of the ceilings being in a perfect 
state of preservation. 

There are other ruins of ancient towns almost 



86 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



equally important in these regions. Many of 
these groups are worthy the name of towns and 
even " cities," for there must have been in them 
elements of collective order, of well -controlled 
community life and public interests with con- 
siderable populations. It is not a matter for 
surprise that these ruined towns, towers, round 
and square and subterranean sanctuaries, set 
amid these extraordinary cliffs and ravines should 
have been the theme of romantic and even absurd 
stories. It is not permissible to term the people 
who built these structures a " vanished " race, as 
it cannot be doubted that they were to some 
extent the forerunners of the present Indian 
people. As to the time of their building this is 
obscure, but the Cliff cities were in ruins at the 
Spanish advent. The date of their abandonment 
might be suggested as from eight to ten centuries 
ago, but even this is conjectural. The problem 
of their inhabitants' disappearance has not been 
solved. They differed anatomically in important 
respects from the present Pueblo Indians, being 
narrow-headed, whilst the latter are broad- 
headed, it is stated, and in the symbols and 
decorations on their pottery. As shown in an 
illustration later, the patterns on pottery in some 
cases embodied the " Greek " pattern, so freely 
encountered in Mexico, Central America, Peru, 
and in Asiatic and European regions. A device 
on another specimen of Cliff Dweller pottery, 
illustrated here, shows what might be an " astro- 
nomical cross." A large population must have 
occupied these regions in prehistoric times, judg- 



THE CLIFF DWELLERS 87 



ing by the great extent of the ruins ; places 
where to-day large communities could not be 
supported, as, for example, in the Chaco Canon. 
Here, in the midst of a sandy plain, now water- 
less except for the very short rains of the summer 
season, are seen ancient irrigating ditches of con- 
siderable extent, indicating that, at the time of 
their construction, the climate must have been 
a different one. Indeed, geological evidence 
points to a slow drying-up of the whole south- 
west region, and doubtless a gradual exodus of 
these ancient people took place by reason of 
increasing drought — the story over again of 
ancient peoples in Mexico and Peru, and, indeed, 
in other parts of the world. 

What is the connection, if such there was, 
between the Cliff Dwellers of Arizona and the 
culture of Mexico? There is considerable 
evidence, it is held by those authorities who have 
closely studied this field of interinfluence, of 
contact between them, and, indeed, of the early 
existence of some common source of origin of 
culture-factors. One of the principal authorities 1 
on the ethnic history of Arizona, New Mexico, 
and the Pueblo culture area adjacent holds it 
to be probable that both Mexican and Pueblo 
cultures originated in Northern Mexico, develop- 
ing as far as its environment permitted towards 
the north and the south. In the north it pro- 
duced the Cliff Dwellers, in the south the 
advanced temple architecture of Mexico and 
Central America, hieroglyphs, and other adjuncts 
1 Dr. Fewkes. 



88 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



of the Mexican civilisations. The same authority 
traces the great serpent cult of Tusayan, the 
" New Fire," and other ceremonials of the 
Pueblo peoples, as well as some of their fine 
handicraft, examples of which have been re- 
covered from the Pueblo ruins, such as earrings 
and breast ornaments, whose workmanship equals 
that of the famous Mexican work, to the same 
source. 

This great arid region of the south-western 
part of the United States, indeed, appears to have 
held some mysterious centre or dispersing-point 
for these early civilisations, or the ideas which 
motived them. It is to be recollected that the 
wandering tribes of the Mexicas who peopled the 
valley of Mexico, from the Toltecs to the Aztecs, 
came from some unknown place in the north. 
A suspicion might easily rise in the mind of the 
student, of some long-past, unknown arrival of 
cultured immigrants upon the American coast 
at this point : some voyagers from Asia, perhaps, 
who either by accident or design had crossed 
the ocean. This cannot be held to be the realm 
of pure speculation, and must be considered in 
conjunction with what has been said elsewhere 
as to the passage over the ocean of junks from 
Asia. Perhaps the " seven grottoes or caves " of 
the Toltec legend were seven ships ! 

As to the connection between Mexico and the 
Cliff Dwellers, it is stated that only one Pueblo 
language — the Moqui or Hopi of North-Eastern 
Arizona — shows positive relationship with the 
great Nahuatl tongue of ancient Mexico. There 



THE CLIFF DWELLERS 89 



was a linguistic unity between the civilised Aztec 
and the savage Shoshones and Ute family, some 
of whose offshoots wandered as far as Costa 
Rica, and even possibly to Panama, which 
" forms one of the most interesting ethnological 
facts in prehistoric America," according to 
authorities upon the subject. 

Creation legends in considerable variety exist 
among the aborigines of North America, as 
indeed of South America, and some of these are 
mentioned together in a subsequent chapter. It 
will be well to include here, however, the striking 
Creation story of the Zuni Indians, one of the 
most remarkable among all the North American 
Indian legends. It is given by Cushing in the 
" Outlines of Zuni Creation Myths," and well 
summarised in the article in the last edition of 
the Encyclopaedia Britannica which I quoted 
in another chapter. The principal figure is 
" Awonawilona," the " Maker and container of 
all," and the growth-substance the " fogs of in- 
crease " which he evolved by his thinking in 
the pristine night. The long story of the origin 
of the sun, the earth, and the sky, and the taking 
form of the " seed of men and all creatures " 
in the lowest of the caves or four wombs of 
the world, and their long journey to light and 
real life on the present earth is a wonderful story 
of evolution as conceived by the primitive mind : 
an aboriginal epic, in fact, says this writer. 

The Zuni or Pueblo Indians are those who 
occupy to-day the twelve Pueblos in New 
Mexico, and they are descendants of the Cliff 



90 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 

Dwellers whose remarkable handiwork we have 
considered in this chapter. 

The mythology of the Californians was charac- 
terised by the absence, not only of migration 
traditions but of ancestor traditions. 1 Of their 
rites and prayers many were concerned with the 
need for rain : and that, indeed, might well be 
the supplication of the Western Americans, 
ancient or modern ! Nothing in this region of 
Western America, from Arizona and Utah to 
California, impresses the traveller more than the 
dependence of the country upon water for irri- 
gation ; and the marvellous results secured 
thereby, in turning tracts of apparently arid and 
useless territory into fields and gardens bowered 
with profuse flowers and trees of every luscious 
kind of fruit, whose seeds or scions have been 
culled from every part of the globe, from 
Britain to Arabia. 

The ancient delta-lands of the south-western 
region of the United States are of great interest 
ethnologically, for here a prehistoric people culti- 
vated the land and made conduits for irrigating 
it ; and a considerable population must have 
flourished there in pre-Columbian days. The 
first white settlers, forty years ago, easily distin- 
guished the boundaries of these ancient fields, 
and the lines of the irrigating channels which 
long ago brought the life-giving fluid on to the 
thirsty land, and many of these remains are still 
to be seen. This region, drained by the great 
Colorado River and its tributaries, is indeed well 
1 According to Kroebor. 



THE CLIFF DWELLERS 91 



termed the Asia Minor of America, and has in 
its physical characteristics and the regimen of 
its streams much in common with the Nile and 
the Euphrates. The river is silting up the head 
of the Gulf of California, much as the Euphrates 
has filled its delta throughout the ages. Here 
also — like Jordan — are streams, villages, and 
plantations, on tracts of land 250 feet below the 
level of the sea. 

Mention must not be omitted here of the 
occurrence of the Swastika in this part of 
America. As the traveller passes through 
Arizona and New Mexico he will find offered 
for sale by curio-dealers these little luck-charms, 
whose form or symbol is of such world-wide 
occurrence. A discussion of the significance of 
the Swastika is given in a subsequent chapter. 
Some students have endeavoured to trace the 
original habitat of the American Indians by 
means of this symbol, which leads to every land 
almost, both in the Old World and the New, 
from Tibet, Persia, and China to Colorado and 
Peru ; and especially is it looked upon as show- 
ing Buddhist connection or influence. In North 
America the Utes, Navajos, Pueblos, Pimas, 
Apaches, and others knew of it, and figured it 
on their robes. A good specimen of a prehistoric 
Swastika exists in the museum at Denver, Colo- 
rado, and on a bowl taken from the ruins of 
the Cliff Dwellers in Manco Canon there are 
fourteen Swastikas depicted. 

Before entering upon the Mexican culture it 
will be well to conclude here by noticing the 



92 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



ruins of Casas Grandes — Spanish for " Great 
Houses "—which are in Mexico close to the 
American border and upon the railway from 
Ciudad Juarez on the frontier. They are pre- 
historic buildings of adobe and gravel, whose 
origin is unknown, as they were in ruins and 
abandoned at the time of the Conquest. The 
principal building extends for 800 feet from 
north to south and 250 feet from east to west, 
with walls up to 5 feet thick. These walls in 
places are 40 to 50 feet high and appear to 
have been of six or seven stories, with apartments 
varying in size from mere closets to large 
courts. Not far from this building are the 
foundations of a smaller edifice with a series of 
rooms ranged round a square court ; whilst the 
whole district is studded with artificial mounds 
from which excavation yields stone axes, metates, 
or meal-grinders, and pottery of a much better 
character than the modern native pottery of the 
country. 

From these regions of the south-west of the 
United States to the seat of the Aztec and 
pre-Aztec cultures is a great distance, nearly 
one thousand miles, with very fragmentary 
patches indicating the culture of prehistoric 
peoples. The northernmost stone monument 
in Mexico is at Quemada in the State of 
Zacatecas, and this seems to mark some 
frontier, real or imaginary, where the feebler 
civilisation of the builders of adobe structures 
ended and the more virile culture of the stone - 
building people began. 



CHAPTER VI 



EARLY MEXICO : TOLTECS AND AZTECS 

Character of early Mexico — Bloodthirsty religion — The 
problem of its origin — The Toltecs — The famous 
god — Picture-writing — Early history — Mexican mural 
remains — The Teocallis — Stone of sacrifice — Awful 
women goddesses — Analogy with Babylon — Pyramids of 
the sun and the moon — Teotihuacan — Pottery and 
acoustics — Other pyramids — Cholula and Papantla — 
Remarkable structures of Monte Alban — The Zapotecs — 
Sculptured halls of Mitla — Ruins in Guerrero and 
Tehuantepec — Unexplored territory — The dawn of a 
literature — Mexican calendar — Aztec religion — The 
prayer of Nezahualcoyotl to the Creator — The rt Un- 
known God." 

The name of Mexico brings a vivid picture 
before the mind of the traveller who has 
sojourned in that romantic land, a land which 
possesses features so unique as to preserve to it 
an individuality and colour all its own. 

As I write it I seem to hear the creaking 
of my sun -warmed saddle, and to scent the 
pungent odour of adobe dust, rising from white 
trails in an impalpable flour as my horse's hoofs 
stir it up. Here is the humble, courteous, cotton- 
clad peon, with brown face and sandalled feet, 
the " Hispano-Egyptian " denizen of the New 

93 



94 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



World as we may term him and perhaps not 
be far wrong. 

Mexico is a land of thorny cactus and arid 
steppe, of fertile valley and succulent fruits, of 
prehistoric pyramid and temple set upon sun-beat 
plains or on precipitous ridges, or buried in the 
depths of tangled and impenetrable tropic forest. 
Mexico, where man has striven bloodily against 
his fellow-man till the very earth must cry to 
heaven for peace : bloodshed in sacrifice to 
awful gods before the Spaniard, with sword and 
cross, shed it more plenteously still, and after- 
wards as the jealousies of an evolving nation 
poured it out fratricidally. 

It is not, however, a tale of blood that we 
desire to tell, but of a strange civilisation that 
flourished under the blue skies of Anahuac — 
" the land amid the waters," as Mexico was 
termed by its ancient masters — of which Europe 
knew nothing. 

The beginning of history in Mexico is wrapped 
in fable and mystery. The Spaniards, when they 
reached this part of the American mainland from 
the West India Islands, early in the sixteenth 
century, found, not rude and simple tribes such 
as they had so easily overcome in the Antilles, 
but a warrior-nation who, but for the credulity 
to which their superstition gave rise, might have 
successfully resisted them. They found a system 
of civilisation, armies, law -givers, courts of 
justice, agriculture, and mechanical arts, 
astonishing to them and undreamt of, the civilisa- 
tion of an organised people, dwelling in moun- 



EARLY MEXICO 95 



tain-surrounded valleys and impregnable lake- 
fortresses. But what surprised the invading 
white men most were the wonderful examples 
of this unknown people's stone-shaping art. 
They found an architecture of such elaboration 
and ingenuity as astonished the builders of 
Europe of that time, just as it continues to 
astonish the traveller to-day. 

Here was a vastly interesting problem. Some 
of the Spanish writers 1 when they saw the great 
fossil bones found in Mexico, thought that the 
country had been peopled by giants from the Old 
World, before the deluge (just as it has been 
said of Easter Island and its huge stone statues, 
later described). Again, it was conjectured, 
due to the great number of native American 
languages, that a migration to America had 
followed on the famous dispersion after the 
Tower of Babel, and one Spanish writer 2 held 
that the early Mexicans must have been 
descended from Naphtuhim, Noah's grandson, 
who left Egypt — according to him for Mexico 
— after the confusion of tongues. 

The splendid collection of the native traditions 
and examples of picture-writing printed at great 
cost last century by Lord Kingsborough, who 
spent a fortune to prove the supposition of 
a Spanish historian 3 that the Mexicans were the 
" lost ten tribes of Israel," has been of great 
value to archaeologists, not by reason of the 
singular theory but from their preservation in 
his book, the " Antiquities of Mexico." But one 

1 Hernandez and Acosta. 2 Siguenza. 3 Garcia. 



96 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



of the most valuable of native Mexican docu- 
ments is the " Codex Chimalpopoca " which was 
discovered, interpreting the Mexican picture- 
writings. 1 

The Toltecs are the people to whom the 
greatest culture in prehistoric Mexico is attri- 
buted — a vague and shadowy people of whom we 
know very little. Their empire or dominion 
extended from the Atlantic side of Mexico, at 
Vera Cruz and Tabasco, westward to the Great 
Plateau, and even beyond towards the Pacific. 
Indeed, Mexican writers of to-day point to 
Toltec ruins upon the Pacific coast, especially 
at Tepic, which was a Toltec centre. The town 
of Tollan or Tula, however, about fifty miles 
north of the modern city of Mexico, is generally 
given as their principal centre. 

Much discussion has centred about the 
Toltecs, and the assumption has been made that 
they were a distinct race. Another hypothesis is 
that they belonged to the Maya group, and it 
cannot be doubted that they represented a 
much earlier civilisation than the builders of 
Palenque, Quirigua, and Copan, the famous 
Yucatan and Central American ruins, later 
described. The Aztecs were, of course, sub- 
sequent to the Toltecs and undoubtedly adopted 
their civilisation, including their religion, archi- 
tecture in part, and calendar. 

The Toltecs were the builders of the great 
pyramids of Mexico, including Teotihuacan, near 
the present city of Mexico ; those of Papantla, 
1 By Brasseur de Bourbourg. 



EARLY MEXICO 



97 



Huatusco, and Tuzapan, in the State of Vera Cruz, 
and of Cholula. The famous calendar system is 
of Toltec origin, it is held, and also the art of 
picture-writing and the metallurgical and textile 
arts. Indeed, much fascinating lore surrounds 
the Toltecs, and associated with them is the 
famous Quetzalcoatl, familiar to all students of 
Mexican legend. Quetzalcoatl is described as 
a great deity, a god of the air, a saintly ruler and 
civiliser ; in appearance like a white man ; of 
noble features and precepts, bearded, and of 
another race, who came from the north out of 
the unknown, and, after dwelling for twenty 
years among the people, disappeared " into the 
Anahuac," the waters to the east, or the iVtlantic 
Ocean. He left behind him the message that 
a race of white, bearded men like himself should 
come from the direction of the sunrise to rule 
the country. It was largely due to this prophecy 
and the credulity of the Aztec emperor Monte- 
zuma, consequent thereon, that when the 
Spaniards arrived they seemed to be the fulfil- 
ment of the prophecy, and so were freely 
admitted into the country. But it is not our 
purpose here to go farther into this history. 

The picture-writing of Mexico was in daily 
use at the Spanish advent. It is to be recol- 
lected that the inhabitants of the coast made 
pictures of the ships, horses, and guns of Cortes 
and the Spaniards when they arrived at Vera 
Cruz ; which were instantly dispatched by swift 
runners, by the system of post-relays in vogue 
in Mexico, to Montezuma in his stronghold of 

7 



98 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



Tenochtitlan beyond the Sierra Madre — the city 
of Mexico of to-day (see page 115). 

The accounts of Bernal Diaz, Cortes, and 
others show that the Spaniards were vastly im- 
pressed with the evidences of wealth and 
advancement of the Aztecs, and even allowing 
for the inevitable exaggeration of men who 
wished to impress their monarch and stay-at- 
home countrymen, there is no doubt of the true 
impression they received. Readers of Prescott's 
inspiring work will be able to share this, but 
they must be warned that his accounts may seem 
in some respects highly coloured to the traveller 
who knows the country and has studied its 
probabilities. 

The history of Mexico at the time of the Con- 
quest, and prior thereto, is known with consider- 
able accuracy, and is founded upon the accounts 
of Cortes and his companions, Bernal Diaz and 
others, also upon the writings of the Spanish- 
educated Mexican historian of that period. 

The history of the ancient civilisation of Mexico 
and Central America is worthy of more respect 
than to be considered a mere record of the doings 
of savage tribes. In their ideographs the 
Mexicans so far approached real writing as to 
set down legibly the names of persons and places 
and the dates of events. These were valuable 
aids to the professional historian in remembering 
the traditions which were repeated orally from 
generation to generation. As it is, actual docu- 
ments of native Aztec history, or copies of them, 
are available to-day to the student. After the 



EARLY MEXICO 



99 



Spanish conquest interpretations (of these docu- 
ments and codices were drawn up in writing by 
Spanish-educated Mexicans, and more or less 
authentic histories were founded on them, with 
the aid of spoken traditions, by the Aztec-Spanish 
historians, Ixtlilxochitl and Tezozomoc. In 
Central America on some of the monuments rows 
of complex hieroglyphs are to be seen sculptured 
on the walls of ruined temples, and these prob- 
ably served a similar historical purpose. Among 
the most remarkable documents of early America 
is the famous Popol-Vuh, or national book of the 
Quiche kingdom of Guatemala, which has been 
translated. This is described in a subsequent 
chapter. 

The various nations inhabiting Anahuac, as the 
region of the Valley of Mexico and its approaches 
was termed, appear to have been detachments 
of some widespread race speaking the nahuatl 
language, which was the general tongue, and 
the native records and traditions represent these 
immigrants as having come " from the north," 
some place whose locality it is not possible to 
determine. The Toltecs were the first to arrive, 
and tradition has it that they ultimately became 
.disseminated by drought, pestilence, and famine, 
and that the survivors migrated to Central 
America and Yucatan in the eleventh century. 
Other detachments or tribes followed at varying 
periods from the same mysterious northern 
region, and last of all were the Aztecs, whose 
finding of a site for a city is the subject of the 
well-known legend of the eagle, cactus, and 



100 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



serpent, 1 still commemorated on the Mexican 
coins. The history of Mexico and the legends 
connected therewith are of fascinating interest, 
but it is not the purpose to dwell thereon here. 
The city the Aztecs founded about 1325 was 
called Tenochtitlan, and was upon the site of the 
present capital. It was in great part destroyed 
by Cortes and his Spaniards after the fearful 
conflicts at the time of the Conquest. 2 

The accounts of the magnificence of the Aztec 
capital by the Spaniards were undoubtedly highly 
drawn. It would have been impossible for Cortes 
and his men to have destroyed the place so com- 
pletely if it had been of the solid character 
described by them, and there is no doubt that 
only the principal buildings were of stone, the 
inhabitants dwelling in adobe or wattle huts. 
Nevertheless, those buildings and monuments 
which were of stone were a sufficient basis for 
the Spaniards' surprise and admiration. The 
principal palace of the Aztec Montezuma, who 
was reigning at that time, consisted of " hundreds 
of rooms ranged round three open squares, of 
such extent that one of the companions of Cortes 
records having four times wandered about till 
he was tired, without seeing the whole." 

It is worthy of remark, in passing, that this 
kind of ground plan to some extent characterises 
the Inca ruins of Huanuco Viejo, in Peru, which 
are described elsewhere, and of other Inca ruins. 

No vestiges of this great palace remain to- 

1 See illustration in my M Mexico." 

2 See my " Mexico." 



EARLY MEXICO 



101 



day, except it be in the portions of massive 
foundation occasionally unearthed. Similarly 
has the great teocalli disappeared which occupied 
what is now the main plaza of the capital. This, 
the great pyramid of the bloody War God Huitzi- 
lopochtli, was of rubble cased with hewn stone, 
measuring 375 feet by 300 feet on its base, and 
rose steeply in fine terraces to a height of more 
than 75 feet. The Mexican idols — huge sculp- 
tured blocks — are to be seen in the museum to- 
day. These pyramid-temples, the teocallis or 
gods' houses, " rivalled in size as they resembled 
in form the temples of ancient Babylon," 1 and 
they were encountered and still exist in various 
parts of Mexico. Carved " serpent walls " sur- 
rounded the great teocalli of the capital. 

The pyramids were truncated, the summit 
platform forming the site of a temple, and during 
the religious performances a long procession of 
priests and victims was seen by the populace 
below winding along the terraces and up the 
corner flights of steps. On the summit platforms 
of these pyramids there stood three-story tower 
temples, in which, upon the ground floor, were 
the stone images and altars. Before the image 
of the War God stood the sacrificial stone, here 
illustrated, which the traveller may see in the 
museum of Mexico to-day. This stone was 
curved so as to bend upwards the body of the 
victim in order that the priest might more readily 
slash open the breast with his obsidian knife. 
The heart was then torn out, beating, and held 
1 Encyc. Brit., " Mexico." 



102 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



up to the god, while the captor and his friends 
waited below the pyramid for the body to be 
thrown down the steps. This they took home 
to be cooked for the feast of victory. These 
abominable shrines reeked with the stench of 
slaughter, and in them the eternal fires were 
burning. Upon the platform outside the temple 
stood the huge Aztec drum, its parchment formed 
of snakes' skins ; and when beaten its fearful 
sound was heard for miles. The ascent of Cortes 
to this pyramid — that of the capital—was 
dramatic in the extreme. 1 

Perhaps the most impressive object of the 
Aztec culture remaining is the image — of 
appalling aspect — of the " Goddess of the Dead," 
a horrible monster which it is supposed was 
placed on the altar of the great Teocalli of 
Mexico, which Cortes and the Spaniards 
destroyed. It was found in the great plaza or 
square of the city of Mexico, where the Teocalli 
or pyramid-temple stood, and is now in the 
Mexican National Museum. It was an emblem 
of the Nahua theogony, in form of a woman, the 
head formed of a union of two serpents, the 
arms of serpents, and clothed in a saya or skirt 
of serpents. On the breast of the other side of the 
image also are sculptured four human hands, and 
it is supposed this idol represented the Goddess of 
War, who took the souls of those lost in battle, 
the mother of Huitzilopochtli, the bloody War 
God of the Mexicans. This astonishing and 
repulsive figure is sculptured out of hard trachyte, 
1 The fullest account of these matters is in Prescott. 



EARLY MEXICO 



103 



and is 8 1 feet high. The back of the figure is 
shown in the illustration (see frontispiece). 

The famous sacrificial stone is also of trachyte, 
8 feet 9 inches in diameter and 2 feet io inches 
high. In the centre is a small cavity with a groove 
running therefrom, in which ran the blood of the 
human victims ; and there are marks on the stone 
made by the hackings of the obsidian knives 
used by the priests in these horrible sacrifices, 
as before described. Around the side of the 
stone are beautifully sculptured figures, repre- 
senting probably matters connected with the 
Aztec cosmogony, having some similarity with 
those of the Calendar stone. 

The Mexicans were a military people — mili- 
tarism based upon their religion, and they were 
indeed " bloody-minded " people. Their military 
organisation was in some respects equal to that 
of Asiatic nations. The Mexicans played a ball 
game, and tennis, in specially constructed courts, 
using an india-rubber ball. Probably this was 
the first rubber ball seen by Europeans. They 
had also a favourite, complicated game called 
patolli, remarkably similar to the pachisi 
of modern India, it is stated. 

The mural remains of the early Mexicans as 
they exist to-day are of great extent, variety, and 
beauty, and are found over an enormous range 
of territory. A mere enumeration of them 
occupies thirty odd pages in the Handbook of 
American Ethnology. They include pyramids, 
temples, tombs, causeways, statues, fortifications, 
terraced hills, rock sculpture, idols, painted caves, 
canals, pottery, mummies, wells, &c. 



104 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



The pyramids of Teotihuacan are formed of 
adobe and rubble. The pyramid of the sun is 
perhaps the most colossal prehistoric structure 
in America, 700 feet long on the base and 
nearly 200 feet high. Upon its summit, tradition 
says, a huge stone image was set up to the Sun 
God Tonatiuh, whose breastplate of burnished 
gold flashed back the rays of the rising sun. 
The pyramid of the moon is a lesser structure, 
and there are other remains of a similar 
character near at hand. From one pyramid to 
the other runs a singular road known as the 
" pathway of the dead," bordered by ramparts 
of lava stones — some of which still bear the 
remains of painting in bright colours — and 
numerous small buildings which appear to have 
been burial-places. 

The Pyramid of the Sun, of Teotihuacan, con- 
tains perhaps the secret of the most remote 
and advanced civilisations of Mexico, of the 
shadowy Toltecs who are the supposed con- 
structors. Perfectly oriented, its principal side 
faces the east ; and a knowledge of constructive 
necessities is shown in the immense solid plat- 
form upon which it is built, sustaining the 
pressure of the millions of tons of material upon 
it. In form it consists of four portions, one 
upon the other, with four faces terraced at the 
sides, and on the summit a terrace which doubt- 
less contained the temple and the figure of the 
Sun God. It is reached by a fine wide staircase 
of stone, still in good preservation notwithstand- 
ing its age. It is not as high as the Egyptian 



EARLY MEXICO 



105 



pyramids, but resembles them in its various 
coverings or layers and its stone construction 
to some extent ; and possibly it contains subter- 
ranean chambers. Enormous labour must have 
been expended upon it by the people of the 
valley where it stands. 

Of extreme interest, as having been found at 
Teotihuacan, the " sacred city " of the Pyramid 
of the Sun, is the figure of another woman-god, 
that of Omecihuatl, here illustrated, also in the 
National Museum — the " Creator-Goddess," or 
possibly Goddess of Water ; and this has been 
compared by Mexican archaeologists with certain 
Egyptian mythological figures. It is 10 feet 
6 inches high, carved out of trachyte. 

About the fields surrounding Teotihuacan 
hundreds of small terra-cotta masks and idols 
are constantly ploughed up, and many of them 
seem to be moulded as likenesses. Some of these 
much resemble the carvings and castings in stone 
and copper of the objects encountered in the 
tombs of the pre-Incas of Peru, although it would 
appear that the fact has been but little brought 
to notice. Both in Mexico and Peru these objects 
appear to bear, in some cases, a resemblance to 
objects from Egyptian tombs. Another point 
of similarity is in the form of the pottery 
of Mexico and Peru, in the finely-moulded bird 
and animal forms, the vessels having acoustic 
properties ; that is, when blown into, or when 
water is poured in or out of them, they emit 
sounds like the animal or bird they represent. 
It would appear that the similarity between the 



106 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



objects of the pre-Aztecs and pre-Incas is 
stronger than that between the Aztecs and Incas 
themselves — a fact not generally recognised. 

The great pyramid of Cholula measures 
1,440 feet upon its base, and is larger than the 
pyramid of Cheops, and is the oldest and largest 
Teocalli in Mexico. Like most of these struc- 
tures, it is truncated, its height being 200 feet, 
with an area on the summit of more than an 
acre. The hemispherical temple which crowned 
it is now destroyed and obliterated. It was 
reached by exterior staircases up the slope of the 
structure. This pyramid is ascribed to the Tol- 
tecs, and Quetzalcoatl was the presiding deity. 
The site of Cholula is 7,500 feet above sea- 
level. There is a Tower of Babel tradition about 
Cholula. One of the seven giants — Xelhua— 
rescued from the Deluge, the fable says, built 
the great pyramid to storm heaven from, but the 
gods destroyed it with fire and confounded the 
language of the builders. 

Monte Alban, in the State of Oaxaca, has been 
well pictured by one of the best known writers 
on American archaeology. 1 " Entire crests or 
mountains have been cut away to form platforms, 
courts, and quadrangles, high ridges thousands 
of feet above the valley, where pyramid after 
pyramid and terrace after terrace are encoun- 
tered, like unreal or fairy cities shimmering 
in the haze, conveying a sense of mystery 
and unfathomed time which strikes upon the 
beholder's mind. Utterly abandoned and solitary 
1 Holmes, " Ancient Cities of the New World." 



EARLY MEXICO 



107 



are these " high places " to-day, but the chain of 
Teocallis which existed there may be imagined, 
lighted up at night by the glare of sacred fires, 
never extinguished, whilst thronging multitudes 
pressed along the ancient streets." These " man- 
sions in the skies " must have been made under 
autocratic mandate, generation after generation 
perhaps of struggling Indians under the will of 
Mexican Pharaohs, at whose commands, heedless 
of life, labour, and time, the stone, earth, and 
adobe of these pyramids were moved, and these 
mighty excavations formed on the Monte Alban 
hill. 

Others of the famous Mexican pyramids are 
that of Papantla, near Vera Cruz, ascribed to the 
Aztecs, and the smaller sculptured pyramid of 
Xochicalco. Papantla especially is one of those 
pre-Columbian structures which seems to have 
some affinity with the ancient world. Xochicalco 
is of much later date. 

The State of Oaxaca is mainly peopled by the 
Zapotecs, a distinct racial group who have been 
the intermediaries, for an unknown period, 
between the Nahua civilisation of the Mexican 
plateau and the Mayas of Yucatan — a link 
between the east and west of these cultures. It 
is stated that " the influence of the two separate 
currents may be detected in the bastard calendar 
system no less than in the still undeciphered 
inscriptions." 

The beautiful ruins of Mitla in this State, with 
their great monoliths and carved, sculptured 
walls and doorways, are still in a fair state of 



108 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



preservation. Mitla was the burial city of the 
priests and kings of the ancient Zapotecs, and 
if partly analogous with the Mexican ruins they 
bear a distinct character. One of the main 
structures is the step-pyramid, 130 feet high, in 
three steps. But the principal architectural 
features are the monolithic columns and lintels 
and the richly sculptured walls and fretted 
fagades of the palaces. These great halls or 
palaces are generally oriented, like some of the 
Mexican pyramids. The Hall of the Monoliths or 
Columns is a remarkable building 125 feet long, 
with a row of columns down its centre, whilst parts 
of the interior and exterior are carved with a beau- 
tifully executed geometrical design of " Greek " 
character. The blocks upon which the design is 
cut are exactly fitted to each other, and the walls 
of one of the halls show more than thirteen thou- 
sand of these. The stone doorways are massive 
and effective, with lintels in some cases 1 2 feet 
long and 4 feet thick. There exist at Mitla nearly 
a hundred monoliths, as columns, lintels, or roof- 
stones, some 20 feet long and weighing up to 
twenty tons. The large columns were cut from 
quarries in the tractyte formation five miles away 
and 1,000 feet above the level of the buildings, 
and some stones still remain in the quarry, never 
having been removed. 

The name " Mitla " means the " Kingdom of 
the dead," also " hell " ; and it is indeed a 
mystery, whose unknown builders have left no 
trace, of which no translated hieroglyph exists 
such as might afford a clue to the origin and 



EARLY MEXICO 



109 



purpose of the beautiful halls, the sculptured 
fagades, admirably executed mosaics, and strange 
subterranean chambers which form these aston- 
ishing ruins. The only hieroglyphics of Mitla 
are those in the subterranean temple of Tecotitlan 
— the place of the Gods — near at hand, which 
perhaps may yet be deciphered. These have 
been likened to Egyptian hieroglyphics. It is 
noteworthy that at Mitla there are neither idols 
nor sculptured figures of human beings. The 
whole ornament is of geometrical design, as if 
figures had been forbidden in the culture of its 
builders. The walls around the enormous con- 
crete-paved courts forming the four principal 
temples are in some cases six varas thick. The 
whole of the immediate environs of Mitla contains 
remains of pyramids, fortresses, and underground 
chambers, all ornamented in the same way, and 
must have been the work of a people of very 
considerable civilisation. It has been surmised 
that they may have represented some religious 
sect, given over to meditation and the thoughts 
of death, perhaps with religious rites of a 
mysterious and awful nature. Some of the 
underground chambers are cruciform in shape, 
and lined with mosaics, and it is believed 
that further undiscovered subterranean halls 
exist. The ruins form perhaps the most mys- 
terious and remarkable group in the New 
World. 

Mitla can easily be reached to-day. The new 
extension of the railway from Oaxaca and Mexico 
City brings one to within seven miles' carriage 



110 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



drive of the village, and any one may visit these 
beautiful relics of a bygone civilisation without 
danger or discomfort. Their character is well 
shown in the accompanying illustrations ; and, 
for want of a better name, one might term them 
" Mexican-Graeco-Buddhist " in style. 

The State of Guerrero, lying entirely upon the 
Pacific littoral, is a field of much ethnological 
interest due to the large number of distinct 
aboriginal tribes speaking different languages 
which inhabit it, but much of it is unexplored. 
Prehistoric ruins occur in considerable numbers, 
although not of a character such as distinguish 
the more famous Mexican groups. This region 
offers an interesting field for the traveller. There 
are no railways and the saddle is the only means 
of conveyance. 

Tehuantepec is the isthmus State of Mexico, 
and here are the ruins of Quiengold, of consider- 
able extent, including a fine " tennis-court." 
Tehuantepec is a region of much interest in many 
respects, both ethnic and physical. The women 
of the Tehuanas Indians are among the finest in 
Mexico of the native races, and are famous for 
their beauty and graceful carriage. Their native 
holiday costume is one of the most striking to 
be encountered among the aborigines of America. 
A railway now traverses the Isthmus from 
Atlantic to Pacific waters, 192 miles long, and 
has recently been linked up with the general 
Mexican railway system. The traveller may 
therefore reach this region without great diffi- 
culty, and the railway indeed may be looked upon 



EARLY MEXICO 111 



in some respects as a rival to the Panama Canal. 1 
The Isthmus of Tehuantepec may be taken as 
marking the boundary of Mexico in a physical 
and ethnological sense, although not politically, 
for the States and territories of Yucatan and 
Chiapas, which are considered under the Maya 
culture, to which they belong, are part of the 
Republic of Mexico. 

As has been shown, the arts of the early 
Mexicans were far advanced in some respects, 
if extremely barbaric in others — a condition which 
was to have been expected. Probably the Aztec 
empire was near the dawn of a literature when 
the Spaniards overthrew it. Some phonetic signs 
were in use, but the picture-writing, or hiero- 
glyphical representation in line and colour, on 
native paper was their means of record, supple- 
mented by oral description. It is considered by 
the best authorities that the analogy of this im- 
portant step towards phonetic writing with the 
manner in which the Egyptian hieroglyphics 
passed into phonetic signs is remarkable. These 
" devilish scrolls," as the Spanish priests termed 
them, were diligently destroyed by a fanatic 
archbishop, 2 but some famous Mayan documents 
of this nature are preserved. The accurate 
adjustment of civil and solar time in a way 
superior to that of contemporary European 
peoples is pointed to as a proof 3 of early 
Mexican powers in mathematical philosophy, and 
their calendar system of some Asiatic influence. 

* See my book u The Great Pacific Coast." 
2 Zumarraga. 3 Humboldt. 



112 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



The beautiful and massive Calendar Stone of 
the Aztecs, or " sun-stone/' is 12 feet in 
diameter, a monolith of basalt, the stone for 
which must have been brought by its makers 
from a considerable distance, as no rock of its 
character is found in the vicinity. Its sculpture 
is executed with marvellous dexterity and fine- 
ness, and with absolute symmetry, such as could 
not have been excelled by any ancient people. 
It was both a sun-dial and a calendar, such as 
the Egyptians and Chaldeans used in the most 
remote times. Upon it the Aztec priests told 
the time of day by means of gnomons and 
threads ; but in addition to this the solstices 
were determined by these functionaries, and 
account kept of years and days. Further, on the 
face of the stone, as already mentioned, are 
inscribed the time or era of their civilisation, 
the division of the years in weeks and days, and 
the centuries, or series of years, computed with 
a greater exactitude than that of the modern 
Gregorian calendar, its error being equivalent 
only to a day in thousands of years. The central 
figure is that of Tonatiuh, and the hieroglyphic 
upon its forehead indicates the first solar cycle 
of fifty-two years. All the other carvings and 
hieroglyphics have been assigned their use in this 
astronomical wonder. It is almost impossible to 
understand how this stone could have been sculp- 
tured by workmen who had no steel tools ; yet 
this and other numerous objects in diorite, 
granite, trachite, basalt, and other extremely hard 
rock, works of the early Mexicans, must have 



EARLY MEXICO 



113 



been carved, as far as is known, simply with tools 
of hard stone. The reading of a hieroglyphic 
supposes this calendar stone to have been made 
in the year 1479 A.D. This, of course, is a very 
recent date comparatively, and the science which 
gave it birth — if it was not derived from Asia 
— must have taken enormous periods to evolve 
on American soil. If the Assyrian and Baby- 
lonian Zodiacal signs and the Hindu Zodiac are 
of extreme age, calculated astronomically as 
having their origin previous to 1800 B.C., and 
possibly 2300 B.C., the system of early America 
could not reasonably be considered to have been 
of recent origin. 

In connection with the matter of a possible 
derivation from Asia, the article in the Encyclo- 
paedia Britannica, new edition, may be read with 
interest : " The Aztec calendar includes titles 
borrowed, not only through the medium of the 
Tartar Zodiac, but likewise straight from the 
Indian scheme, apart from any known interven- 
tion. The 'three footprints of Vishnu/ for 
example, unmistakably gave its name to the 
Mexican day Ollin, signifying the track of the 
sun,'* says this authority ; and as to the widely- 
diffused Chinese circle of the animals " a large de- 
tachment of the ' cyclical animals ' even found its 
way to the New World." The great authority on 
this subject was Humboldt, as before mentioned. 

This famous calendar is further discussed else- 
where, 1 and the illustration given is from a photo- 
graph of the stone in the museum of Mexico. 
1 See p. 243. 
8 



114 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



A feature of the Mexican mythology was the 
Rain Gods, and the God of the Seas and Rivers, 
and the devotion shown to these is explained by 
the terrible droughts from which Mexico suffers, 
and which in all probability have been one of the 
principal agents in the dispersal and breaking-up 
of these ancient dynasties. A flood legend also 
is not wanting. The Toltecs, whose civilisation 
the Aztec family inherited, supposed, according 
to their chronology, that four thousand years after 
the creation of the world and seventeen thou- 
sand before the Christian era, Cyalchitlique, the 
god governing the seas and torrents, destroyed 
the earth, by upheavals and floods. In the 
curious picture writing of the Vatican Codex this 
cataclysm is represented, the god in the upper 
part of the drawing with angry visage presiding 
over man's destruction. The waves form furious 
whirlpools and inundate a house from which 
a head and an arm appear, indicating that all 
creatures died or were transformed into fishes. 
The two hieroglyphics shown in the illustration, 
serve to indicate the character of the Mexican 
picture-writing. 

The religion of all the early Mexicans was 
not of the sacrificial and bloody character 
described before, and the pre-Aztec peoples, the 
Toltecs, have not been accused of these prac- 
tices, whilst to the neighbouring empire — that 
of Texcoco, contemporaneous with the Aztecs 
upon the Mexican plateau — a chaste and in some 
respects beautiful religious cult has been attri- 
buted. The prince of this State, Nezahualcoyotl, 



MEXICAN PICTURE-WRITING. 




THE DELUGE IN MEXICO. 




MONTEZUMA ORDERING HIS NAME TO BE SCULPTURED AT 
CHAPULTEPEC. 



116 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



has been termed the " Solomon of Anahtiac," 
due to his wisdom and poetic writings. He 
raised a " nine -story temple with a starry roof " 
to the " unknown God " or rather to the deity 
who was called Tloquenahuaque, " he who is all 
by himself," or Ipalnemoani, " he by whom we 
live," and who, like the Inca deity, 1 could have 
no image or likeness, but pervaded everything. 
In this temple human sacrifice was forbidden, 
and offerings of flowers were made. Part of 
the ruins of this edifice still exist, and upon the 
Texcotzinco hill, to bear witness that it was not 
all a fable, are the stone steps and terraces and 
the great embankment of the aqueduct -channel 
of hewn stone, which the traveller may see to- 
day. Baths and hanging gardens, temples, villas, 
and harems are said to have been established by 
this monarch, like those of some Oriental poten- 
tate, and, indeed, the story of his life is one of 
the most romantic of the New World's prehistoric 
heroes. Agriculture was practised under him, on 
hillside terraces, like the Andenes of the Peru- 
vians, later described, and, indeed, there was 
much about his regimen that is comparable with 
the beneficent rule of the early Peruvian 
emperors . 

But most eloquent of all is the prayer of 
Nezahualcoyotl as recorded by the Spanish- 
educated historian of that time, showing a mind 
capable of deep religious thought, like the 
Solomon of the Old World. This was his 
prayer : — 

^See p. 174. 



EARLY MEXICO 



117 



" Truly the gods which I adore, idols of 
stone and wood, speak not nor feel ; neither 
could they fashion the beauty of the heavens, 
the sun, the moon, and the stars, nor yet the earth 
and the streams, the trees, and the plants which 
beautify it. Some powerful, hidden, and un- 
known. God must be the Creator of the universe, 
and He alone can console me in my affliction or 
still the bitter anguish of this heart." 1 

1 See Spanish rendering of Ixtlilochitl in Prescott's 
" Mexico." 



CHAPTER VII 



THE MAYA WONDERLAND 

The civilisation of the Mayas — Yucatan and Chiapas — Age of 
Maya culture — Arrival of Cortes — Types of architecture 
— Pyramids and galleries — The magnificence of Palenque 
— The beau-relief — Temples and crosses — The cross 
in prehistoric America — Yucatan millionaires — Henequen 
and oppression — Rubber and slavery — Ruins of Uxmal 
— The Maya Arch — Astonishing architectural forms— 
Chac-mol figures — Egypt and Mexico — Le Plongeon's 
theories — The mastodon in stone — Prehistoric hydraulics 
— The famous Cenotes — Sacrifices of virgins — Yucatan 
and the Ganges. 

If Mexico was a land of strange and sacred things, 
Yucatan and Central America, the home of the 
Maya culture, might well arouse our interest even 
to a greater extent. Erom among the forests and 
jungles of this remarkable region ruined temples 
and pyramids stand out like visions of some 
fabled story, wrapped to-day in dense vegeta- 
tion, solitary and mysterious examples of man's 
abandoned handiwork. 

What is now the great State of Oaxaca, in 
Southern Mexico, the home of the Zapotec and 
Mixtec tribes, was the merging-point of the two 
sharply contrasted cultures of Mexico and 
Central America, as was natural from its 
geographical position between them. 

118 



THE MAYA WONDERLAND 119 



The region covered by the evidences of the 
Maya civilisation embodies the Mexican States 
of Chiapas and Yucatan, and extends thence 
into the Central American republic of Guate- 
mala and others, as shown in a subsequent 
chapter. At what time did this culture rise, 
flourish, and fade? 

It cannot be doubted that the civilisation of 
the Mayas was derived from an earlier system, 
and, indeed, was reared upon it, and this is the 
only rational view that can be taken. The life 
of the culture represented, however, by the exist- 
ing famous buildings of Central America cannot, 
it has been calculated, have endured more than 
five hundred years. It is considered by recent 
authorities on the subject that its highest 
development was reached at the time of the 
Mexican or Nahua approach thereto, notably in 
Mayapan and Chichen Ytza, following which it 
became extinct. These must have been famous 
centres, known over vast areas, and this assump- 
tion is borne out by what scanty documentary 
records exist. Yet it is shown that the Mayan 
culture also tended to assimilate other elements, 
as shown in the types of its buildings. 

In Bancroft's exhaustive work it is considered 
that the history of the Mayas " indicates the 
building of some of the cities at various dates 
from the third to the tenth century. There is 
nothing in the buildings to indicate the date of 
their erection — that they were or were not stand- 
ing at the commencement of the Christian era. 
We may see how, abandoned and uncared for, 



120 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



they have resisted the ravages of the elements 
for three or four centuries. How many centuries 
they may have stood guarded and kept in repair 
by the builders and their descendants we can 
only conjecture." 1 

It is to be recollected, as concerns the age 
of these ruins of Yucatan, that some of them 
at least were occupied when Cortes arrived ; for 
it was in Yucatan that the Conquistador first 
landed, and if the life of the culture they repre- 
sent is taken at five hundred years, it would 
seem that the civilisation responsible for them 
must have been roughly coeval with the Incas 
of Peru and with the Aztecs of Mexico. It is, 
apparently, the same story of a newer civilisation 
or culture founded upon and succeeding an older, 
as in the case of the Incas and Aymaras of 
Peru — a newer culture, but not necessarily an 
equal or superior one. The structures of sculp- 
tured stone bequeathed by this culture are 
perhaps the finest of all in the New World, and 
astounded Europe when they were discovered. 

Some of the ruins of Central America repre- 
sent the remains of entire cities which once 
flourished there, whilst others can only have been 
groups of buildings, and even single structures 
standing alone. There are certain well-marked 
types in these buildings, the commonest being 
pyramids and galleries. Some of the pyramids 
were built of brick, but the general construction 
was of hewn stone with a covering of carved 
slabs. Up the sides of these pyramids were stair- 
1 Bancroft, " Native Races," vol. iv. 



THE MAYA WONDERLAND 121 



cases, like the teocallis of Mexico, and some 
of them were built in steps. The platform on 
the summit was generally occupied by a temple, 
divided as a rule into two parts, vestibule and 
sanctuary. Altars, pillars, and sacrificial stones, 
as necessary for the rites and ceremonies prac- 
tised there, were subsidiary parts of the struc- 
tures. There were also dwellings for priests and 
officials ; and the famous " tennis-courts " for 
the ball games like that of the early Mexicans 
before mentioned were a marked feature of these 
places. These courts were always built north 
and south, and almost invariably all the buildings 
have a definite orientation to the cardinal points. 
In some cases the pyramids form one side of 
a quadrangle, inside which are lesser pyramids, 
altars, and other structures. These astonishing 
buildings have been well described and illus- 
trated, 1 and are as much worth a visit by the 
traveller as some of the famous temples of 
antiquity in other lands. 

As to the galleries, the usual type is that of 
an oblong building with doors in the front, facing 
on the quadrangle or enclosure, divided into a 
series of rooms. In some cases these galleries, 
as far as their ground plan and the quad- 
rangles are concerned, bear some similarity to the 
long hails built by the Incas in Peru. These, 
however, were of one story only, whilst the 
Central American galleries may have as many 
as three stories, the height and shape of the 
rooms being determined by the requirements of 
1 See Holmes and others. 



122 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



the vaulting. This vaulting, or " Maya Arch," is 
described later. 

The principal groups of ruins of Maya cha- 
racter to be considered in this part of Mexico 
are those of Palenque, in Chiapas, and of Uxmal 
and Chichen Itza, in Yucatan. 

At Palenque twelve truncated pyramids, built 
of earth, stones, and masonry, have been dis- 
covered, eight of which are crowned by temples. 
These are known respectively as the Temple of 
the Sun, the Temple of the Cross, the Temple 
of the Inscriptions, and the extensive group 
known as the Palace. It has been said that in 
the unequalled magnificence of its sculpture 
Palenque outshines all the other structures. 

These temples are of massive masonry, partly 
rough blocks, partly of worked and sculptured 
stone and stucco sculpture. They have 
numerous doorways on to the platform at the 
summit of the pyramids, and are in some cases of 
an interior vault construction, carrying roofs of 
masonry. A square tower of four stories rises 
from the Palace group about 40 feet high, the 
centre of a system of extensive courts, buildings, 
and walls, all upon the summit of a low pyramid 
200 feet square. The lintels over the doorways 
are, as in the case of the Yucatan structures 
elsewhere described, of wood, and the decay and 
failure of these has in some instances brought 
down portions of the facades. Interior staircases 
and huge reliefs of human figures are a feature 
of these interiors, and the beautiful figure known 
as the Beau Relief has been compared by some 




PYRAMID TEMPLE AT CHICHEN ITZA, YUCATAN. 



l"o face p'i 122. 



THE MAYA WONDERLAND 123 



archaeologists with the relief sculptures of 
Babylon and Egypt. A subterranean passage- 
way, through which a stream still runs, of stone- 
vaulted construction, of which a thousand feet 
still exist, is a noteworthy feature of this pre- 
historic city. A dense growth of forest and 
vegetation covers these ruins, the whole valley, 
walls, pyramids, and roofs being buried in a 
leafy sea. 

One of the largest and best preserved of all 
the structures here is that known as the Temple 
of the Inscription, so called by reason of the 
tablets it contains, carved with hieroglyphics. 
There are other sculptured slabs, which form 
balustrades to the steps leading up to the temple. 
The exterior is decorated with figures in stucco, 
those on the outer faces of the four pillars in 
front being of life size, representing women 
bearing children in their arms. It is perhaps 
worthy of note here that at the Temple of Cuzco, 
in Peru, as recorded by the early Spanish 
chroniclers, there were stone figures of women 
carrying children. 

The small temple known as the Beau Relief is 
built on a narrow rocky ledge of the steep slope 
of the hill, and in a central position on the back 
wall of the sanctuary is the famous stucco bas- 
relief representing a single figure seated on a 
throne. This figure is beautifully modelled, both 
as to form, drapery, and ornaments, with the face 
turned to one side and the arms outstretched. 
A representation of this remarkable figure — which 
some have attempted to compare with Egyptian 



124 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



or Assyrian work — has been preserved in one of 
the books descriptive of these buildings — fortu- 
nately so, as the figure is falling to decay. 

The Temple of the Sun also contains figures 
and hieroglyphics, and calendar datings which 
are remarkable as showing some special combina- 
tion of numbers and hieroglyphics which do not 
occur elsewhere. In the Temple of the Cross is 
a tablet which has excited controversy because 
its design contains a representation of a Latin 
cross. In connection with the occurrence of the 
form of the cross in Mexico, the crucified figure 
pierced with arrows, in the Mexican Codex, is 
also of interest. 

All the above-described remains are in the 
State of Chiapas, which still contains an exten- 
sive range of territory but little explored. The 
same holds good as concerns the State of 
Guerrero, although these cannot be remains of 
such importance as those of Palenque, still un- 
discovered. There is, however, much to be done, 
and the traveller will enter a field of great 
interest and possibilities here. Leaving Chiapas, 
we enter upon the peninsula of Yucatan. 

As stated, this remarkable region belongs 
politically to Mexico, although archseologically 
and ethnologically it is part of Central America. 
Geologically, too, it is very different to Mexico 
proper, and as our steamer lies off the coast we 
see at once that we are looking upon another 
land. Here are no sierras rising from sandy 
coast plains, topped by a snow-clad peak, like 
that of Orizaba from Vera Cruz, but a flat region 



THE MAYA WONDERLAND 125 



of plain and forest. The formation of Yucatan 
is a curious one— a great limestone plain, with 
its rivers running underground, and covered with 
forest. 

Detailed study of the ruins in this part of 
Mexico has not been easy, due to the forests and 
swamp-growth, the malaria, encountered in 
places, and the backward state, politically, of 
the region. Here, perhaps, the modern Spanish- 
American rule has been more oppressive to the 
aboriginal element than elsewhere (unless in the 
Amazon rubber-bearing region), 1 and that is 
saying a good deal. Great fortunes have been 
made by the Mexican hacendados, planters of 
the henequen fibre ; and, indeed, the henequen 
millionaire is the outstanding feature of social 
life in Yucatan ; but in the creation of the wealth 
brutal serfdom has been involved and the 
trampling on the most primitive rights of the 
humble workers of the soil, the prime pro- 
ducers of the wealth. It would be out of place 
to dwell upon these matters here, and the reader 
may be referred to recent literature upon the 
subject. 2 It is easy to exaggerate these matters, 
but the whole of Spanish-American life, ancient 
and modern, has been an example of oppression 
meted out to the native, whether in Mexico, 
whether in Peru. 3 The atrocities which were 
recently exposed of a rubber company on the 

1 See p. 168. 

2 See " The American Egypt," also various recent magazine 
articles. 

3 See also my book " The Andes and the Amazon." 



126 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



Peruvian Amazon bear witness to this condition. 
The peon or the cholo of Spanish America is 
little more than a chattel at present. 

The ruins of Uxmal, the archaeological pride 
of Yucatan, have been described by competent 
observers as one of the grandest groups of 
remains on the continent. 1 It is, however, 
situated in an extremely unhealthy district. The 
country is for the most part a great forest- 
covered plain, with a horizon level as the sea. 
The area covered by the main group of ruins 
is not much more than half a mile square, but 
scattered remains are found beyond this limit, 
and it must have been an extensive and im- 
portant place. The buildings are now much 
dilapidated and covered with thick vegetation, 
except where recent clearings have been made. 
But they are extremely impressive, and it is 
difficult to realise that the huge pyramidal 
masses, rising like hills above the general level, 
are really wholly artificial." 

The five great structures or groups of struc- 
tures at Uxmal, which are the finest specimens 
of Maya architecture, are those known as the 
Pyramid Temple of the Magician, or Casa del 
Adionio, the quadrangle called the Nunnery, or 
Casa de Monjas, the House of the Turtles, or 
Casa de Tortagas, the House of the Pigeons, 
or Casa de Palomas, and the Governor's Palace, 
or Casa del Governador. There are many other 

1 " Archaeological Studies among the Ancient Cities of 
Mexico/' W. H. Holmes (Columbian Field Museum, Chicago, 

1895)- 



THE MAYA WONDERLAND 127 



buildings surrounding these, but of less interest 
and importance, principally because they are in 
a more advanced stage of dilapidation. There 
are certain features of material and construc- 
tion common to nearly all these buildings. The 
stone is a pale yellowish and reddish-grey 
marbled limestone, which must have been quar- 
ried from the massive strata somewhere in the 
vicinity. The sites of these quarries, however, 
are buried in the dense jungles, and are hard 
to find. The body of the walls is formed of 
unhewn stone in mortar of excellent quality, 
made of lime burned in the vicinity. The facings 
and decorations are all cut and carved with dex- 
terous skill, not surpassed even in work in which 
tools of iron and steel are used ; whilst the faces 
of the blocks and their contact margins are cut 
with absolute precision. The stones were bedded 
in mortar, but in some cases the joints are so 
well made that the mortar does not show on 
the surface. A great deal of plastering was used, 
and surfaces and even mouldings and sculptures 
were rendered with white plaster and painted 
in colours. The walls average 3 feet thick, 
and consequently are massive, and there are no 
windows or openings for air or light. The door- 
ways are of simple construction, with lintels, 
where they remain, of zapote wood, a hard native 
variety, dressed square, measuring 8 feet long 
and 1 5 inches wide ; and many of these large 
lintels are in a good state of preservation even 
to-day. 

On plan, these buildings generally take the 



128 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



form of a rectangle, long and narrow, and having 
one or two series of rooms. None of them are 
over one story, but the remarkable roof crests 
give an effect of great height in some cases. 
The base of the buildings is formed of terraces 
or low pyramids. 

As to the interior construction, this embodies 
the peculiar vaulted ceilings of stone, the wedge- 
shaped Maya " Arch." This, of course, is not 
an arch in reality, although termed so for con- 
venience ; but it consists of horizontally placed 
stones, successively corbelled out, bevelled to 
form a smooth slope, and spanned at the top 
by a larger slab : this type of construction is 
found, although in less degree, in Peru, and is, 
of course, a natural development of primitive 
stone-masonry. 

The general structure of the apartments and 
vaulted ceilings is shown in the accompanying 
illustration, which is a section of the Governor's 
Palace. 

Among the most remarkable ruins in the group 
is the Temple of the Magicians ; and it is the 
first to catch the traveller's eye as he approaches 
from the trail. This structure consists of a steep 
step -pyramid with a ruined temple upon its 
summit ; and upon the western face near the top 
is a second remarkable structure. The height of 
the pile is upwards of 80 feet, the length at the 
base about 240 feet, and the width nearly 160 
feet. The summit platform measures about 22 
by 80 feet. The interior of the mass is composed 
of rough stones in coarse mortar and the surface 



THE MAYA WONDERLAND 129 



was faced with rough-dressed stone, large 
portions of which are still in place. A wide 
stairway rises directly from the roadway on the 
east side, at an angle so steep that the ascent 
is made with difficulty and risk. The steps are 
much loosened and displaced, but as a whole the 
stairway is in a wonderful state of preservation, 




TYPE OF MAYA ARCH OR VAULTED CEILING; FROM HOLMES'S " ANCIENT 
CITIES OF MEXICO." 

(a) Outer doorway, wood lintels restored. 

(b) Inner doorway. 

(c) Back wall, nine feet thick. 

(d) Entablature with rich decorations. 

M considering the steep angle and the destructive 
agencies at work for upwards of four hundred 
years." The temple which crowns the summit 
is some 70 feet long by 12 feet wide. The arch- 
supported roof had fallen in when the above 
account was written, and the walls are broken 
down in various places, but some were still 

9 



130 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



adorned with chastely embellished lattice-work 
panels, unique sculpture, and masks of rare form. 

The most striking feature of the structure 
is a temple built against the north side of the 
pyramid. The doorway opens on a narrow plat- 
form from which a stairway some 24 feet wide 
descended into the court below. The facade of 
this temple is about 22 feet square, and is a 
most ornate and vigorous piece of composite 
sculpture. The large space above the doorway 
is occupied by a colossal snouted face or mask 
some 12 feet square, filled with striking detail. 

Another famous group of buildings here is 
the Nunnery Quadrangle, and this is among the 
best known specimens of Maya architecture, but 
" much as it has been described, and as fully 
as it has been illustrated by the drawings of 
Catherwood and Le Plongeon, and the photo- 
graphs and casts of Thompson, the student must 
see it before he can begin to realise its marvels." 
Four great rectangular structures stand upon a 
broad terrace in quadrangular arrangement, their 
ornate fronts facing inwards upon the enclosed 
court. They do not have the character of temples, 
but rather of communal dwellings for bodies of 
priestly orders. The terrace upon which these 
buildings are placed has not been very clearly 
defined. The base measures upwards of 300 feet 
square ; on the south it rises in three unequal 
steps to a height of perhaps 1 5 feet, on the other 
sides considerably greater. The four great 
facades facing the court are among the most 
notable in Yucatan, and deserve special attention 



THE MAYA WONDERLAND 131 



at the hands of students of American art. They 
have been carefully described by several authors. 
Bancroft's descriptions are especially full and 
lucid. Examining the various motives employed 
in embellishment, we find that the great snouted 
mask (or at least partially masked faces, prob- 
ably symbolising the chief Yucatec deity 
Cukulcan) was the favourite and is found in 
all the fronts. Next to the mask design the 
most important motive is the serpent. The 
embodiment of the colossal feathered serpent 
with the complex field of geometrical decoration 
in the west facade is a most effective piece of 
work and must be regarded as a great master- 
piece of decorative sculpture. Life-sized or 
colossal human figures, almost in the round, form 
a fourth group of motives, and several fragments 
remain to attest the skill and taste of the 
ambitious builders. It may thus be said that 
these buildings employ some eight or ten 
distinctive elements, nearly all of which are 
doubtless mytho -aesthetic, and were introduced 
because of their associated ideas, as well as for 
embellishment. They all occur in other buildings 
in Uxmal, and nearly all are found in Chichen 
and other cities of Yucatan. 

The so-called Governor's House or Palace is 
built on a broad triple terrace, and this superb 
building is justly regarded as the most important 
single structure of its class in Yucatan, or for that 
matter in America. It is 320 feet long, 40 feet 
wide, and about 25 feet high. The building 
faces the east ; the front wall is pierced by 



132 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



nine principal doorways and by the two arch- 
way openings, and presents a facade of rare 
beauty and great originality. The House of the 
Turtles and the House of the Doves are also 
remarkable structures, the last named being a 
group of six galleries surrounding a court. 

The foregoing descriptions of Uxmal are taken 
from Holmes's comprehensive works, to which 
the student may be referred for fuller detail and 
illustrations. 

Scarcely less famous than Uxmal, and not to 
be confused therewith, is Chichen Itza, in the 
northern part of Yucatan, about midway between 
the east and west coasts. 

These ruins consist of eight principal groups, 
which are among the most important and best 
preserved of any of the early American struc- 
tures. They are grouped around two natural 
flowing wells in the limestone formation, the 
cenotes, famous in this remarkable peninsula. 
The larger of these wells is 350 feet long by 
150 feet wide, and their rocky sides are 60 or 
70 feet high. The Casa de Monjas is a three- 
story building, bearing traces of three distinct 
periods of construction ; a small round structure 
— the Caracol — in imitation of a snail -shell ; and 
El Castillo, an ornate temple on a pyramid of 
striking appearance, 200 feet on its base and 75 
feet high, with staircases on all four sides. This 
temple is adorned with serpent-pillars of a kind 
found only at Uxmal and at Tula, near Mexico 
city. There is also an unnamed temple -pyramid, 
with a strange group of caryatid figures ; also 



THE MAYA WONDERLAND 133 



a tennis-court, and lastly, the Temple of the 
Tigers, with extraordinary coloured reliefs repre- 
senting figures of warriors, and hieroglyphs, all 
executed in a distinctively Mexican style. 
Another evidence of Mexican influence at 
Chichen Itza is to be noted in fine figures of 
the so-called Chac-mol type — that is to say, 
horizontal figures in which the arms are ex- 
tended to the navel, which is indicated by a 
cup-like depression. The Chac-mol type is 
characteristic of such sites as Tlascala and 
Cempoalla. 

These last-named places, it will be recollected, 
are on the Mexican gulf slope, and were among 
the first points on the mainland of Mexico visited 
by Cortes, who destroyed some of the temple - 
pyramids of the tribes dwelling there. 

In considering the works of the Mayas it might 
well be asked what instruments of precision they 
possessed, to perform stone masonry so true and 
plumb and of such elaboration as excites our 
admiration even to-day — buildings which it 
would seem impossible to construct without 
scientific appliances. 

Mention has been made of the singular theory 
advanced by one of the explorers 1 in Yucatan 
that Egypt owed its early civilisation to Mexico ; 
and he set forth his theory in his books. The 
matter was recently brought before the public 
again in a magazine article 2 of which it is of 
interest to note some particulars. 

1 Dr. Augustus le Plongeon. 

2 London Magazine, April, 1910. 



134 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



" Whence did Egypt derive her civilisation ? 
No one has yet succeeded in discovering a solu- 
tion to the mystery. One fact is assured : the 
farther back research goes, the more complete 
is found Egyptian civilisation. It was not 
autochthonous ; it was carried to Egypt. Who 
carried it? Various scientists have adduced 
theories, but none of them have any substance. 
Yet the key to the problem stares them in the 
face if they would but rid themselves of pre- 
conceived ideas. In Yucatan we find the key 
to the problem. In 1 The Greater Exodus ' 1 
we find the following : ' On the ancient Egyptian 
monuments, especially those which refer to the 
campaigns of Sesostris, there are pictures which 
have never been explained in a satisfactory 
manner. These are of men with red skin, beard- 
less, and wearing the headdress of the old 
Peruvian Incas.' 

" The architecture of the people of Yucatan 
was the precursor of Egypt and Babylon, their 
religion was passed from continent to continent, 
they built pyramids and had a wonderful system 
of letters. Le Plongeon died maligned, sneered 
at by self -constituted authorities who preferred 
to perpetuate a wrong rather than admit that the 
whole ideas of civilised man, which have passed 
muster for so many centuries, were put in the 
melting-pot by the genius of Le Plongeon and 
one or two able workers in the same field. 2 His 

1 Lee. 

2 Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg. His work was valuable, 
but his interpretations are held to be fanciful. 



THE MAYA WONDERLAND 135 



discoveries at Chichen Itza, where he found the 
tomb of Chac-mol, or Prince Coh, are dramatic 
to an extraordinary degree. They associate 
Mexico with Egypt, Babylon, and other past 
epochs. Yet Dr. le Plongeon spent his fortune 
and died in poverty to advance a theory and a 
cause which he knew to be true, and he and his 
devoted wife spent their lives in exploration in 
Yucatan, and deserve the homage of the scientific 
world. To-day few libraries contain his works. 
It rests with the world ere too late to make 
amends to his widow. Let us know the truth, 
which for two thousand years has been denied 
us, and at which Plato hinted in his famous 
Dialogues." 

Whatever view the reader may form of this, 
it is certain that much interesting matter was 
laid bare by the Le Plongeons. The explorer 
sought to trace in the remarkable sculpture on 
the frieze of the fagade of the Nunnery or Casa 
de Monjas at Chichen Itza " an illustration which 
might serve as the account of the creation given 
in an ancient work of the Brahmins, the 4 Manava 
Dharma Shastra,' compiled in 1300 B.C. from 
works of greater antiquity. But the letters in- 
scribed are ancient Egyptian letters. The 
sculpture portrays an egg, surrounded with 
scallops, indicating rays, to demonstrate the 
sacredness of the divinity within the cosmic egg. 
The picture is enclosed in a frame of zigzag 
lines ; symbolically this represents the egg 
floating in the midst of the waters. 

" The letters M.H.N ., forming part of the 



136 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



design, signify in Mayan ' engendered/ the 
same signs as deciphered by Champollion on 
the famous Rosetta Stone as meaning the same 
thing in the Egyptian tongue." 

Some of these signs, it will be observed, take 
more or less the form of the " Greek " pattern, 
which is so freely encountered at Mitla and upon 
textile fabric and pottery in Reru, and in other 
parts of the world, as discussed elsewhere. 

On the fagade of that remarkable building at 
Chichen Itza known as Kuna, or God's House, 
is some strange sculpture of singularly shaped 
stones which appear to represent great visages. 
" These great faces," the last quoted account 
says, " were not intended as correct likenesses 
of any creature, but were a grouping of certain 
letters, which gave the ancient name of the pre- 
historic animal the mastodon. While it is 
commonly known that in Asia the elephant has 
been regarded with veneration for ages, it re- 
mained for us to learn from these old walls that 
the big American pachyderm had been similarly 
sacred among the people who anciently dwelt in 
Yucatan." The " trunk of the mastodon " projects 
from the walls. The illustration of this sculp- 
ture, 1 indeed, shows the remarkable trunk-like 
curved stones which are so striking a feature 
of the fagade. 

The foregoing writers point out other assumed 
analogies with Egyptian culture, including the 
figure of the Mexican sphynx and crocodiles 
which were unearthed by them. The great statue 

1 See my " Mexico." 



THE MAYA WONDERLAND 137 



of Chac-mol, which they excavated at Chichen 
Itza, weighed.it is stated, 3,500 lb. The statue 
is now in the Mexican Museum. In another 
tomb, " after many days' hard work there came 
to light a curious prostrate figure, which required 
sixteen men to haul it out and set it upright. 
If standing, this figure would have been 7 feet 
high. One leg was found broken off, and one 
foot was turned in, clubbed. One arm was 
shorter than the other, like that of Thoth, the 
preceptor of Isis in Egypt." One of the illustra- 
tions given by the Le Plongeons shows a bas- 
relief with the Maya or Toltec headdress, which is 
stated to be similar to the pointed Egyptian head- 
dress or sphent, except that the latter was worn 
with the point at the back by dwellers in Lower 
Egypt. 

It is also remarked that " Tat, the Maya word 
for ' father,' was a name often applied to Osiris, 
and that the Egyptians always pointed to the 
west as the birthplace of their gods." 

As regards the word Tat I might remark in 
passing that a somewhat similar term, viz., Taita, 
is the word for " father " among the Quechuas 
of Peru to-day, and was, of course, an Inca word. 
It is used as a term of respect, moreover, to the 
functionary or even to the traveller to-day in 
the Andine highlands. 

Those who desire to follow the theories and 
deductions of the Le Plongeons will find them 
set forth in the books published by the explorer, 1 
and also in the article quoted. 

1 " Queen Moo and the Egyptian Sphynx ; or, Sacred 
Mysteries among the Mayas and Quiches." 



138 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



There are other noteworthy ruins in Yucatan, 
such as Chacmaltun, with fine wall-paintings ; 
Tantah, with remarkable pillared facades ; the 
ruins of Labna, Chunhuhub, and the caves of 
Loltun ; and Xlabpak de Santa Rosa, where there 
is a three-storied temple palace. Two sculptured 
reliefs are of great interest. They represent a 
person holding a staff, on which is a figure of 
the god Ah-bolon-tzacab. The islands of 
Cozumel — where Cortes first landed — and 
Mujeres Island also contain smaller ruins. 

It was a high aboriginal civilisation, already 
in its decline, that Cortes encountered, partly of 
deserted cities falling into ruins ; whilst others, 
such as Chichen Itza and Uxmal, were still 
peopled by the last of the Mayas. There is no 
record of or reason for the decline of these 
people, as far as is definitely known. The great 
extent of these ruined structures seems to argue 
the former existence of large populations in well- 
settled districts, productive agriculturally, for 
there could not have been any system of com- 
merce such as would have supported them. 
Possibly the exhaustion of the soil, drought, 
epidemics, &c, caused the decline, for the climate 
is hot and unhealthy, and the greatest problem 
must have been that of water conservation. 
There are, indeed, legends of great droughts, 
which also destroyed the Toltec empire. 

How well these primitive engineers did provide 
against drought, by taking advantage of a curious 
natural feature — the underground flow of water 
in the flat limestone formation, in a land where 



THE MAYA WONDERLAND 139 



there are no streams — is shown by the famous 
cenotes or underground reservoirs, which 
afforded a perennial supply of water. Just as 
into the Ganges of India maidens were cast as 
sacrifices, so were virgins cast into these sacred 
wells of Yucatan. 

In a subsequent chapter some Asiatic affinities 
with Yucatan are discussed. 



CHAPTER VIII 

CENTRAL AMERICAN MARVELS 

Guatemala — British Honduras — Honduras — Salvador — 
Nicaragua — Costa Rica — Difficult topography — Pilpil 
civilisation — Migration from Mexico to Central America 
— Ancient sculptures and reliefs — Farthest limit of Maya 
culture — Chac-mol sculpture — Ruins of Quirigua — 
Beautiful stelas — Ancient city — Terraces and plazas- 
Huge carved stones — Hieroglyphs — The "Greek" pattern 
— Santa Lucia Cozumalhuapa — Numerous ruins — Ex- 
pedition of Cortes — Three pyramids — The Quiches — The 
famous Popol Vuh — Story of the Creation and the 
Deluge in prehistoric America — Ruins of Copan — Pyra- 
mids, ramparts, and terraces — Metal-craft of Chiriqui — 
Reading the hieroglyphs — Junction between Mayas and 
Incas — Ecuador and Columbia — Mysterious conquerors. 

There is no slackening of archaeological interest 
on crossing the merely modern political boundary 
between Yucatan and Chiapas, and Guatemala 
and the other Central American Republics. No 
ethnological division occurs, and both archaeo- 
logically and physically the two regions merge 
into each other. 

Guatemala is a fairly large and flourishing 
republic, but, like all her neighbours, with great 
areas of undeveloped territory. To the north 
lies a small portion of the British Empire — 
British Honduras. South-eastwardly thence are 

140 



CENTRAL AMERICAN MARVELS 141 



Honduras, the republic, Salvador, Nicaragua, and 
Costa Rica, all independent republics, known 
principally to the British or American reader by 
reason of questionable financial matters. Lastly 
there is Panama, with its great canal. 

It is only of comparatively recent times that 
much investigation has been made into the 
archaeology of this region, which astonished 
Europe when first brought to notice, but 
nevertheless painstaking research has been 
carried out. 1 The fact of close connection 
with Mexican culture is well established, and 
it is held that some Central American peoples 
were actually Mexican in their language and 
culture, especially the Pilpils and a large part 
of the population of Nicaragua. Discoveries 
made 2 in Central America during the years 1907 
to 1909 determined the fact that elements of 
Mexican origin extended through Guatemala, 
Salvador, and portions of Nicaragua, as well as 
in several places in Costa Rica. 

It is to be recollected that these regions of 
Central America, the smaller Spanish-American 
republics of to-day, cover a large area of terri- 
tory, iconsisting of mountain ranges, profound 
valleys, lakes, swamps, tangled forests, and fiery 
volcanoes. Indeed, Central America embodies 
perhaps the most diversified part of the earth's 
surface, and has been and still is the scene of 
mighty natural operations and forces. Never- 

1 Especially by Lehmann, Maudslay, and other well-known 
explorers. 

2 By Dr. Lehmann, 



142 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



theless, this pre-Hispanic civilisation overcame 
these obstacles, and man spread and practised 
his stone -shaping arts in profusion along that 
great belt of savage territory. 

It is stated to be an error of the Spanish 
historians who held that the Pilpil civilisation in 
Guatemala and Salvador was not older than the 
time of King Ahuitzotl of Mexico 1 — 1482-6 — 
during the Aztec regime. The language spoken 
by the Pilpils of Salvador on the Balsam coast, 
recent authorities state, is a very old dialect of 
the Mexican language of the highland of Mexico, 
and has preserved forms still older than the 
original and classic Nahuatl itself. The separa- 
tion of the Pilpils from the chief tribes of the 
Nahuatl branch must have happened centuries 
before the Conquest. They developed a strange 
civilisation, vestiges of which can be seen in 
the remarkable stone-reliefs and sculptures of 
Santa Lucia de Cozumalhuapa on the Pacific 
coast of Guatemala. Archaeological and lin- 
guistic researches, 2 especially in Salvador and 
Nicaragua, also enabled another very important 
fact to be proved, viz., that these Pilpils, who 
may be descended from the peoples of the 
Mexican plateau, migrated into territories pre- 
viously occupied by an older race of Mayan 
origin. The new and interesting evidence 
secured proves in addition that people of the 
Maya race once occupied a great part of 
Salvador and Honduras. Typical Mayan ruins 

1 One of the Mexican Aztec kings. 

2 Of Dr. Lehmann, the most recent authority. 



RUINS OF QUIRIGUA, GUATEMALA. 
Stela 10 feet high, with hieroglyphs. 

To luce p. 142. 



CENTRAL AMERICAN MARVELS 143 



in Honduras, at Tenampua, and in Salvador, near 
Tehuacan, and Quelapa, near San Miguel, were 
left by these people, although Mayan hieroglyphic 
inscriptions are not encountered. The most 
easterly limit of pre -historic Mayan civilisation 
on the Pacific coast of Central America is that of 
Fonseca Bay, with the island of Zacate Grande. 
It has been shown that archaeological remains of 
the type found in northern Honduras, in the 
Ulloa Valley, have been encountered on the 
Pacific coast of Salvador, including a curious 
stone sculpture of the so-called Chac-mol type, 
known before only from Tlaxcala and Chichen 
Itza. In the nearly unexplored part of 
Nicaragua, Dr. Lehmann found fragments of 
painted polychrome clay pottery. It is possible 
that these remains of Mayan pottery came into 
Central Nicaragua as articles of commerce. It 
is remarked that evidences of Mayan civilisation 
cannot be found in any other part of Nicaragua 
or Costa Rica, which seems to point to the limit 
of this culture geographically. 

The remarkable ruins of Quirigua, in Guate- 
mala, near the border of Honduras, lie close to 
the Guatemala railway, which traverses that very 
narrow portion of America from Puerto Barrios 
on the Atlantic side to San Jose on the Pacific 
side. Here, in a valley which is described as " a 
sheltered tropical paradise," is the home of one 
of the oldest American civilisations, and there 
are many temptations for the traveller to 
visit it. 

The banks of the Montagua River for a dis- 



144 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



tance of some forty miles, and comprising an 
area of some two hundred square miles, is dotted 
with ruins of an ancient race. Graves, mounds, 
monoliths, and stone heaps testify silently to the 
life which once filled the valley. Undoubtedly a 
large part of the Mayas found a most agreeable 
home here. 1 

The principal place of interest is the ruined city 
of Quirigua, still in the heart of the jungle, and 
this must have been the metropolis of the primi- 
tive people in pre-Hispanic days, for here they 
built their great square and erected the beauti- 
fully sculptured and massive monoliths, which 
are undoubtedly among the most remarkable 
examples of the early American stone-shaping 
art. These remains are now preserved by the 
Guatemala Government as public property. 

The principal monuments are of stelae, or 
vertical pillars of carved stone, animals and 
reptiles carved in stone, blocks, terraced walls, 
temples, and pyramids. The ancient city is laid 
out with a large central plaza, or square, and a 
smaller court. The hills about two miles away 
appear to have furnished the stone for these 
structures, which may have been floated to the 
spot by stream and canal, remains of which latter 
still exist. 

" The main group of buildings seems to have 
been built in the form of an enclosed court. The 
terraced walls which form this court to the east 
and south average some 30 to 40 feet high. At 

1 V. M. Cutter, in the " Bulletin " of the Pan-American 
Union, Washington, January, 191 1. 



CENTRAL AMERICAN MARVELS 145 



this point partial excavation has shown several 
rooms with walls of squared stones and doorways 
arched with flat stone. To the north the plaza is 
open, with an immense terraced pyramid in the 
centre of the opening. This pyramid measures 
some 150 feet square at the base, and rises to 
a height of over 40 feet. All the walls and 
terraces are overgrown with immense trees, and 
the stones are displaced badly by the roots, which 
have forced them out of place and sent them 
tumbling down the walls. 

" Near the southern wall and directly facing 
the pyramid before described lies an immense 
round carved stone weighing probably well 
over twenty tons. The main figure on this stone 
is that of a woman, elaborately dressed, and is 
claimed to constitute one of the most wonderful 
known monuments of ancient civilisations in 
existence. The top and sides of this stone are 
completely covered with glyphs and figures, with 
probably several Mayan dates included." 1 

The illustration of this remarkable stone shows 
the boldly and beautifully executed sculpture of 
the woman's face, and lower down is seen the 
inevitable " Greek " pattern, such as is sculp- 
tured on the walls of Mitla, figured on Peruvian 
pottery and textile fabrics, and familiar in 
decorative art all over the ancient and modern 
world, as indicated on page 244. 

" Near the eastern wall is a circular stone with 
the figure of a man in sitting posture, and sur- 
rounded by picture-writing as yet undeciphered. 
1 " Bulletin," ante. 
10 



146 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



Near by lies a stone, carved possibly to repre- 
sent a tiger's head. Outside the temple court 
are two stelae about i o feet in height, with figures 
of women on front and back, with glyphs on 
either side, these latter being surrounded by 
ornamental feather or scroll work. Near the 
latter stones are several stelae, which have fallen 
or been thrown down by some ruthless explorer. 

" These stelae are remarkably well preserved. 
They are of sandstone, the carving in low-relief, 
and not as ornate as that at Copan in Honduras. 
It is stated by archaeologists who claim to have 
deciphered the Mayan dates of the glyphs that 
these stelae were set up at intervals, most of the 
dates being of the ninth and tenth cycles of 
Mayan chronology. Other stelae are encountered 
near at hand, three in a row, the tallest being 
26 feet above the ground, covered with beautiful 
carving and glyphs, with the huge headdress and 
death's head and crossbones characteristic of 
nearly all these figures of Quirigua. The largest 
of these stelae leans over at an angle, is 5 feet 
square and 20 feet high, with probably 10 feet 
more below the surface. How were these huge 
stones brought here? for even to-day their trans- 
portation would be a problem through the soft 
soil of the valley on whose base they exist. 

" In this last-named group are two large oval 
carved stones which must weigh over ten tons 
each, one apparently representing a turtle and 
the other a frog. Other walls, stones, and 
carvings of equal interest are covered up with 
soil and silt, and only further excavation can 



CENTRAL AMERICAN MARVELS 147 



reveal them and the ruins as a whole, and shed 
further light upon the race who set them up." 

Still in Guatemala we reach Santa Lucia 
Cozumalhuapa, the remains of a pre -historic 
centre which was in ruins even at the time of 
the Spanish advent, when the Conquistador 
Alvarado arrived there in 1522, after the con- 
quest of Mexico. This is a peculiar site on the 
Pacific slope of the Cordillera, and the remains 
consist principally of enormous blocks of stone 
sculptured with gods, goddesses, and other 
figures of a distinctively Mexican character, with 
various Mayan features, attributed, as before 
mentioned, to the Pilpil Indians, an offshoot of 
Nahua stock. 

Guatemala is indeed rich in these ancient 
ruins, which are numerous and extensive and 
distributed over a wide area. At Piedras 
Negras, Yaxchilan, or Menche and Tinamit, are 
important ruins — temples covered with sculptured 
reliefs and hieroglyphic inscriptions, and stelae 
and slabs carved with human figures placed 
in niches. In the Peten district Tikal is famous 
for its splendid sculptures representing Kukulkan 
and other divinities. Near the modern city of 
Guatemala are the vast ruins of Guatemala- 
Mixco. Chacujal, which Cortes visited on his 
expedition of 1524-5, is very possibly to be 
identified with the modern Pueblo Viejo on the 
River Tinaja. 

The expedition of Cortes to Honduras, it will 
be recollected, was marred by the incident of 
the murder of the unfortunate Guatemoc, who 



148 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



had accompanied him and who was hanged head 
downwards from a tree after a mock trial, by 
order of Cortes. This was one of the most bar- 
barous acts committed by the Conquistadores, 
and ranks with that of the murder of Atahualpa 
at Cajamarca, in Peru, by Pizarro, about ten 
years later, during the Conquest. 

Between the headwaters of the Rivers Chiapas 
and Lacuntun are other noteworthy remains of 
prehistoric Guatemala : a series of three pyra- 
mids, as also pyramids with human figures on 
their platforms ; whilst at Quen Santo " stelae 
with a calendar character prove that Mayan 
sciences had penetrated into what was probably 
the home of an old Lacuntun culture." 

Guatemala was the home of the great Quiche 
nation, who, at the time of the Spanish Conquest 
in 1524, when they were so ruthlessly destroyed, 
were the most powerful of the three Mayan 
peoples in that region. The famous Popol Vuh, 
their Sacred Book of History, containing a 
mythological cosmogony, is one of the most im- 
portant documents of the early American people. 
It was translated into Spanish by the Dominican 
Friar Ximenes, and a French version was written 
by Brasseur de Bourbourg. There is also an 
English edition. 1 To its tradition "may be due 
the remarkable similarity of the Quiche Creation 
story to that of the Old Testament." 2 This book 
begins " with the time when there was only the 
heaven with its boundaries towards the four 



1 Spence (1909). 

2 Encyc. Brit., " Quiches." 



CENTRAL AMERICAN MARVELS 149 



winds, but as yet there was no body, nothing 
that clung to anything else, nothing that balanced 
itself or rubbed together or made a sound ; there 
was nought below but the calm sea alone in the 
silent darkness. Alone were the Creator, the 
Former, the Ruler, the Feathered Serpent, they 
who give being — and whose name is Gucumatz. 
Then follows the Creation, when the creators 
said 4 Earth,' and the earth was formed like 
a cloud or a fog, and the mountains appeared 
from the water, trees covered the hills and 
valleys and their forests were peopled with beasts 
and birds, but these could not speak, but could 
only chatter and croak. So man was made first 
of clay." 

The Quiches had a skilfully fortified capital 
and an extensive system of government and 
religion, and their records were kept in picture- 
writing. Guatemala to-day is full of interesting 
historical lore, and offers many allurements to 
the traveller. 

Leaving Guatemala, we enter its sister republic, 
Honduras, and here are the important ruins of 
Copan, close to the border. This place was one 
of the principal centres of the Mayas. Pyramids, 
temples, and the ruins of great buildings mark 
the bygone civilisation of these ancient people 
here in this narrow land between the Caribbean 
Sea and the Pacific Ocean. Copan is only some 
thirty or forty miles from Quirigua, last de- 
scribed. Altars, in the form of a turtle, and stelae 
covered with hieroglyphs, exist, the meaning of 
which latter " is so far clear that it is known that 



150 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



the commencement of an inscription records 
certain dates in the complicated calendar system 
of the Mayas. A collation of these dates demon- 
strates that the most ancient on record are 
separated from the most recent by an interval of 
only a few centuries. From this it may be con- 
cluded that the Mayan civilisation, whether or 
not it was preceded by anything older, flourished 
for only a comparatively short period, the begin- 
ning of which cannot be placed many centuries 
before A.D. iooo." 1 

The carvings and sculptures in the British 
Museum, discovered and brought to England by 
Mr. Maudslay, show the character of the monu- 
ments of Copan. 

Other ruins in this republic, of " large pyra- 
midal terraced structures often faced with stone, 
conical mounds of earth and walls of stone," 
are found near Yarumela, Lamajini, and the 
ruined town of Cururu, on the plains in the 
province of Comayagua, and others in the side 
valleys and adjoining tablelands. Tenampua 
shows ruined ramparts, defence works, terraced 
stone mounds, and numerous large pyramids. 
There are other ruins in the western part of 
Honduras. 2 Remains which indicate the former 
existence of a large population are found at 
Rio Ulloa ; and, indeed, this broken land of 
deep valleys and tablelands — for Honduras mean 
" depths " — tells the same tale as its neighbours, 
of buried temples and bygone civilisation. 

1 Encyc. Brit., u Central America." 

2 Described by Squier. 



CENTRAL AMERICAN MARVELS 151 



Even British Honduras, that small -holding of 
the British Empire in South America, bounded 
by Guatemala and Yucatan, and lying to the 
north of its neighbour of the same name, has 1 
antiquities, although they have been but little 
investigated and command but a scanty litera- 
ture. Near Santa Rita wonderful wall paintings 
in stucco came to light, but have in the main 
been destroyed after their discovery by the 
Indians. These ruins, it is shown, were erected 
over buildings of more ancient date. Some of 
the old buildings resemble those of Yucatan. 

The little republic of Salvador, lying to the 
south of Honduras, has numerous relics of 
Mayan civilisation buried in the earth ; few ruins 
are to be seen on the surface. There are, how- 
ever, three large ruins : Cuzcatlan, near the 
capital, Tehuacan, and Zacualpa, on the Lake of 
Guija. " A characteristic feature of the exten- 
sive ruins of Zacualpa is that the pyramids and 
ramparts have perpendicular steps which are 
higher than they are broad, and this peculiarity 
may be attributed to the influence of the Maya 
tribes. " 

As before mentioned, Nicaragua and Costa 
Rica — the latter the little republic enjoying the 
best climate and most advanced people of this 
region — have comparatively little of archaeo- 
logical remains. Panama has even less, perhaps, 
except that Chiriqui was a centre of pre-Hispanic 
metal-craft, as mentioned elsewhere. 

We have now reached the limit of the civilisa- 
tion and influence of the Mayas. It extended, 



152 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



as we have seen, over a wide range of territory, 
probably as much as or more than a thousand 
miles in length. A study of Mayan hieroglyphs 
has yielded some results to decipherment, " but 
had the available material for study been confined 
to the few Mayan picture manuscripts which had 
survived the destructive fanaticism of the Spanish 
missionaries, little progress would have been 
made beyond establishing subsidiary details in 
the actual calendar which, analogous to that 
of the Mexicans, was said to have been used 
by the Mayas. But when a similar analysis was 
applied to the numerous monuments discovered 
and figured, 1 some important results of a general 
bearing were obtained. It was found that many 
of the hieroglyphs of various forms upon the 
stones were also of numeral value, and, what 
was of great importance, that they all referred 
back to a single starting-point. This starting- 
point or zero is no doubt the mythological date 
at which, according to Mayan cosmology, the 
world was created. It is placed at nine or ten 
cycles before the time when Copan and Quirigua 
were erected and the picture manuscripts 
made." 2 It has been possible, from these 
matters, to adduce some chronological record of 
the most famous of these monuments, and " to 
confine the period of their erection within the 
space of a few centuries, and approximately to 
fix even their absolute antiquity," 3 as mentioned 
before. 

1 By Maudslay and others. 

2 Encyc. Brit., " Central America." 3 Ibid. 



BAS-RELIEF FROM QUIRIGUA, GUATEMALA. 



CENTRAL AMERICAN MARVELS 153 



Thus we leave the vast regions of North and 
Central America, with their strange secrets of 
buried temples and barbaric civilisations. We 
leave it to enter upon another and equally vast 
and mysterious region — that of South America 
and the Incas. We pass along that narrow neck 
of land beyond the Panama Canal, wherein lies 
that classic " peak in Darien," from which 
Balboa, on September 25, 15 13, first beheld the 
Pacific Ocean — the first white man, indeed, to 
look upon it — and so reach the great continent of 
which Colombia and Ecuador are the northern- 
most countries. Below them, across the Equator, 
lies Peru. 

Colombia may be looked upon as a meeting- 
ground between the Aztec and Inca cultures. 
The tribes of the highlands preserve charac- 
teristics more akin to those of the Aztecs 
than to any other race. At the time of the 
Spanish Conquest the most important of these 
tribes had attained a considerable degree of 
civilisation. They lived in settled communities, 
cultivated the soil, and " ascribed their pro- 
gress towards civilisation to a legendary cause 
remarkably similar to those of the Aztecs 
of Mexico and the Incas of Peru." The 
Tayronas, of the Santa Maria highlands, who 
have totally disappeared, were also remark- 
able for the progress which they had made 
towards civilisation. Evidence of this is to be 
found in the excellent roads which they con- 
structed and in the skilfully made gold ornaments 
which have been found in the district which 



154 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



they occupied, as well as in the contemporary 
accounts of their conquerors. 

Ecuador had its mysteries, even before the time 
of the Incas. The earliest people known there 
were the Quitus, who had evolved and extended 
an empire from warring savages, until, as 
tradition records, in the latter part of the eighth 
century a people from some unknown source, 
calling themselves Caras, appeared upon the 
coast in large rafts and established a regular 
form of government under a sovereign called 
Seyri . They worshipped the sun and moon, were 
skilful astronomers and learned in certain arts 
and sciences, their civilisation being a higher 
one than that of the Quitos, whom they sup- 
planted. They governed the country for four 
and a half centuries, until they themselves were 
overthrown by the advent of the Incas, under the 
Emperor Tupac Yupanqui, in 1450. Thus it 
was that conquest preceded conquest in these 
great regions, long before the Spaniards appeared 
— strange doings of peoples who came out of 
the Unknown, and established something of order 
from savagery and chaos. 



CHAPTER IX 



THE INCAS— CHILDREN OF THE SUN 

The fascination of Peru — Means of travel — Some of the 
wonders of the world — Remarkable building sites — 
Topographical situations — Climatic influences — The 
coast zone — The Incas and pre-Incas — The Andes — 
Extent of Inca Empire — The Quechua language — Rela- 
tive ages — The son of the sun — A " virgin birth " — 
Duration of Inca empire — The famous royal roads — 
Lake Titicaca — The ruins at Cuzco — The " navel " of the 
Empire — Sacsaihuaman — Inca stone masonry — Fortress 
of Ollantaytambo — Intihuana and Pisac — Astronomical 
pillars — The throne of the sun — The Amazon forests — 
Unfathomable Tiahuanako — The " Unknown God " — 
Prayer to the Creator. 

•Who has not felt the lure of romance attending 
the name of Peru, that far-off land of Pizarro and 
the Incas, of which even to-day we hear so little ? 
The Peru of old was a land of wondrous things, 
and in many respects it is the most interesting 
portion of the vast field we have set ourselves 
to tread in this volume. The long journeyings 
within this land of great mountains and deserts — 
the Tibet of America, the roof of the world in 
the Western hemisphere — which fortune called 
upon me to make have left impressions which 
time will not easily banish. 

Our study of the prehistoric culture and archi- 

155 



156 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



tecture of Peru will take us farther back in time 
than that of Mexico perhaps. To visit its ancient 
stone ruins will, in many cases, demand a greater 
tax upon our endurance, for Peru is one of the 
most inaccessible countries of the world, as 
regards its interior. Roads are conspicuous by 
their absence, and the few railways, constructed 
with foreign capital at enormous cost, are only 
just beginning to send out their branch lines 
into the remote valleys and plains. 

Nevertheless, some of the most famous ruins 
of the Inca and pre-Inca periods are adjacent to 
the railways and can be visited by the traveller 
without great discomfort, although the mere 
tourist is scarcely likely to be attracted to the 
Peruvian interior at present. 

In these high regions of the Cordillera of the 
Andes, on the great plateaux and the slopes of 
precipitous and inaccessible valleys, we encounter 
a series of ancient stone structures of great 
interest and importance, in some cases unique 
among the wonders of the world. The extra- 
ordinary love or habit of building halls and 
temples of laboured stone in the most inacces- 
sible positions that the mind of man could con- 
ceive is the most remarkable feature of the early 
Peruvian culture. These old cities were not set 
on alluvial plains or by the estuaries of navig- 
able rivers, but in places where their inhabitants 
might have been supposed to possess some of 
the attributes of the condor and the vicuna in 
order to carry on their traffic there ! The sites 
of Egyptian and Assyrian ruins were child's play 



THE IN CAS 



157 



in comparison with the eyries of the Andes, and 
we can only marvel at the seemingly purposeless 
energy displayed until we reflect that necessity 
forced these people to adapt themselves to their 
only environment. There are, of course, ruins 
of cities which are set by the sea, but these 
were relatively evanescent in comparison with the 
habitations of the highlands. 

Before entering upon a detailed description 
of the Peruvian culture and archaeology let us 
briefly consider — and it is necessary to a proper 
understanding of the subject — the topographical 
conditions surrounding the old Empire of the 
Incas. As we approach Peru from the sea we 
are confronted with a long, sterile shore, beaten 
by tearing surf between the few havens. There 
is no sign of life upon the seaboard, except the 
cry of the seals and the occasional flights of 
guano -producing sea-birds, which fly at times in 
veritable clouds upon the face of the water. As 
for man and his habitations, except for the few 
seaports and the streets and houses clustered 
around them, and the irrigated plantations in the 
vicinity of the few rivers which descend from 
the Andes to the sea, across the eighty to one- 
hundred-mile-wide strip of coast lands, and the 
occasional pueblo and Indian hamlet, there is 
little to be seen. The coast lands are mainly sun- 
beat deserts, which for hundreds of miles separate 
the valleys where agriculture is possible under 
irrigation. For the coast-zone of Peru, lying 
between the foot of the Andes and the Pacific 
Ocean, is a rainless region fourteen hundred miles 



158 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



long, extending southwards, into the appalling 
deserts of Tarapaca, in Chili. Rain practi- 
cally never falls, and the only atmospheric 
moisture is the garua or evening mist- 
drizzle at certain seasons. Nevertheless, it is 
upon this coast-zone, which enjoys a generally 
excellent climate in other respects, that the 
Spanish-American peoples have mainly taken 
root ; and Lima, the attractive capital of the 
Republic of Peru, is situated thereon, a short 
distance inland, as well as other cities. 1 

Crossing this dry coast -zone, we rapidly ascend 
the Andes, and encounter climatic conditions 
exactly the reverse of those we have left below. 
Heavy rainfall and snowfall, bracing and rarefied 
air, and perpetual snow upon the summits are the 
characteristics of this lofty region. Topographi- 
cally this region consists of great, high, bleak 
plateaux, from 10,000 feet to 16,000 feet above 
sea -level, absolutely treeless • and to reach these 
from the coast or from the interior, or, indeed, 
from each other, we have to cross the intervening 
ranges of the Andine Mountain system — vast 
parallel ranges whose passes are rarely less than 
14,000 feet above sea-level, and whose peaks 
rise in some cases to more than 20,000 feet 
elevation, far above the line of perpetual snow. 
I have crossed these inclement plateaux and 
passes on many occasions, and retain strong 

1 Some of the particulars in this chapter were given in my 
lecture to the Architectural Association of London ; also 
before the Royal Society of Arts (Medal awarded) and 
Royal Geographical Society. 



THE IN CAS 



159 



recollections of toilsome days and months spent 
on mule-back amid their alternating sunshine, 
rain, and snow — toilsome yet full of that peculiar 
pleasure which the traveller knows. Some of 
the snowy passes and peaks, indeed, which I 
explored had never been trodden previously by 
the foot of a white man, nor, indeed, of any 
human being. The mountain sculpture of the 
Andes is beautiful and striking ; the rising or 
setting sun tinges the snow-crowned peaks with 
that ruby glow known to the Andine or Alpine 
traveller, and the vast, heavenward-pointing 
ridges of upturned strata of the Silurian or 
Cretaceous periods and the great uplifts of 
plutonic rocks form mighty fagades and far- 
reaching Andine towers and aisles — an eternal 
architecture which surmounts the work of man's 
hands that lies below, and perhaps has influenced 
its character. 

I have dwelt thus upon the climate and topo- 
graphy of Peru because it bears in an important 
way upon the architecture of the Incas and pre- 
Incas who flourished there in past ages. The 
mural remains of these people, their great monu- 
ments in stone and sun-dried brick are found 
all over the region of the Cordillera, and to a 
lesser extent upon the coast, and their character 
varies much in accordance with their situation 
and climatic environment. Thus upon the rain- 
less coast-zone the buildings were largely of 
adobe, or sun-dried earthen bricks, the well- 
known material used throughout Spanish - 
America to-day, whether in Mexico, Peru, or 



160 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



Chile ; whilst as we rise to the rainy region of 
the mountains we observe that they are of stone, 
shapen or unshapen. The adobe lasts for 
centuries on the dry coast plains ; it would 
have perished long ago upon the rainy plateaux 
and become obliterated, and here it is that the 
beautiful examples of the stone -shaping art of 
these pre-Hispanic people are found in its per- 
fection. The whole region over which these 
monuments are found may be taken as more 
than fifteen hundred miles long by three hundred 
miles wide, extending throughout what is now 
Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and part of Chile — an 
enormous range of territory for a semi -civilised 
people to influence, and greater than that which 
included the civilisation of the Euphrates and 
the Nile together. 

The Inca empire flourished, as far as can be 
ascertained, from the time of the first Inca, 
Manco Capac, who founded the dynasty at the 
beginning of the eleventh century, to the time 
of the arrival of Pizarro, before whom it fell, 
by the overthrow of Atahualpa in 1532. Thus 
it would seem to have been approximately coeval 
with the Aztecs and Mayas of Mexico and Central 
America . 

Like those, however, it was far from being 
a self -derived culture. The Incas, of course, 
were not a people, but a reigning family, domina- 
ting a number of peoples, the main body of the 
Empire being the Quechuas, and the Quechua 
language was spoken throughout the vast region 
of this Empire. The Quechua language, it is to 



THE INCAS 



161 



be recollected, is still the language of the high- 
land people of South America, in conjunction 
with the Aymara tongue. It was not a mere 
Indian dialect, but a language of such gram- 
matical construction and attributes as must have 
taken a thousand years of its own peculiar civi- 
lisation to evolve. The culture next preceding 
the Inca was that of the Aymaras, whom it is 
assumed the Incas overthrew. 

Thus it is that the civilisation of early Eeru 
is not to be measured by the relatively recent 
culture of the Incas, and this is borne out by 
examination of the great stone monuments — 
temples and fortresses — scattered throughout the 
country, whose respective epochs are readily 
determined. These mural remains are, therefore, 
of different peoples and epochs, some being 
probably only a few hundred years old, whilst 
others, it can scarcely be doubted, belong to 
periods measured probably by thousands of years, 
and of their origin nothing definitely is known. 
The strong tendency to trace their unknown 
builders to an Asiatic or at least a foreign 
source is dwelt upon subsequently. 

Even the beginning of the Incas is wrapped in 
fable and myth. The sun, the legend states, 
looking down from heaven, saw the necessity for 
a more rapid civilisation of those vast regions, 
and he sent forth a son to instruct the half -savage 
tribes . This son came into the world — one legend 
relates— through the medium of a virgin birth : 
a wise woman, Mama Huaco, being pregnant, 
gave out that she had conceived by the sun. 

11 



162 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



When the child was born his mother concealed 
him in a cave on an island of Lake Titicaca, 
and in company with her daughter worshipped 
him as king and lord. The boy grew up 
marvellously wise, and was acclaimed by the 
Indians as their benefactor and ruler, under the 
name of Manco-Capac, or the " Almighty Child." 
He married his own sister, and the line of Inca 
emperors was perpetuated by the marriage of 
the Inca with his sister. These myths and 
matters must have been first pending about a 
thousand years ago, and the names and history 
of some thirteen Inca rulers from Manco-Capac 
down to Atahualpa, at the time of the Conquest 
in 1532, are recorded. 1 

The Empire of the Incas had as its main 
centres Cuzco — the word itself signifies " the 
navel " — in Peru, and Quito, the capital of 
Ecuador, upon the equator ; and these centres 
were connected by the famous Inca roads, which 
some historians — generally those who have not 
seen them — have described as equal to the roads 
of the Romans, which statement is far from being 
true. The accounts of these roads as struc- 
tures have been grossly exaggerated. I have 
traversed them at various points, and have 
described them elsewhere. 2 They were, however, 
means of communication of the utmost value to 
the Empire, and although they were nothing more 
than trails for the llamas, those wonderful camels 
of the Andes which were the only beasts of 

1 Garcilasso de la Vega, the Inca historian. 

3 " The Andes and the Amazon. 0 



THE 1NCAS 



163 



burden known to the people, who possessed 
neither horses nor wheeled vehicles, they gave 
access from place to place, and were traversed 
by the remarkable system of posts and postmen 
maintained by the Inca Government. These 
roads, from Cuzco to Quito, were more than 
1,100 miles long — a distance greater than that 
from ancient Babylon to Egypt. Moreover, as 
engineering structures even, these roads were of 
considerable merit, crossing by rock-hewn steps 
the summits of the Andes above the perpetual 
snow -line, passing swampy lands by stone cause- 
ways, and rivers by means of the remarkable 
suspension bridges made of woven grass or 
osiers, and by stone structures. Native bridges 
of a somewhat similar character exist in the 
Himalayas, it is to be noted. 

There were two main roads. They both 
traversed the country longitudinally along the line 
of least resistance paralleling the ranges of the 
Andes . One, the most remarkable, ran along the 
high plateaux and summits of the Andes ; the 
other followed the lowlands of the coast. The 
groups of buildings which we are to consider 
are in some cases disposed along the line of these 
roads, or are adjacent thereto, portions of the 
roads only remaining here and there. The struc- 
tures consist mainly of castles and fortresses, 
temples, palaces, astronomical observatories, 
tombs, and groups of habitations or towns. All 
of these are now abandoned and in ruins, with 
the exception of some which form the base of 
Spanish structures at Cuzco. 



164 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



The centre or first materialising-point of these 
early Peruvian civilisations — leaving aside for the 
moment those which had their habitat on the 
coast — was the remarkable lake-basin of Titicaca 
and its environs — a large territory contained 
between the main ranges of the Andes, where 
these mountains reach their greatest development 
in Peru and Bolivia. This lake, it will be recol- 
lected, is in some respects the most remarkable in 
the world, being 12,350 feet above sea-level and 
so large that the steamer upon which we embark 
to traverse it takes us out of sight of land. It 
is also noteworthy in being, in conjunction with 
its sister lake Poopo, a hydrographic entity, with 
no outlet for its waters except that of evapora- 
tion, unless there be some unknown subterranean 
vent to the Pacific. 

In and around this great plateau and lake 
region are found the most important remains of 
the Inca and pre-Inca cultures. 

Cuzco, the old Inca capital, lies less than two 
hundred miles from the lake, and was the great 
Mecca of the people and the seat of government. 
Overlooking the city — which to-day is an impor- 
tant, populous place, standing 1 1,000 feet above 
sea-level, is what is perhaps the most remark- 
able pre-historic structure in the New World, and 
indeed in some respects in the whole world. This 
is the fortress of Sacsaihuaman. It consists of 
a series of four or more great walls, from 1 2 feet 
to 25 feet high, forming terraces up the hillside 
1,800 feet long. It is difficult to obtain an 
adequate idea of this structure from photographs, 



THE INCAS 



165 



due to its extent and massiveness. The walls 
are built as great revetments, with twenty salients 
at regular intervals, the masonry being formed 
of Cyclopean worked stones, which in some cases 
are nearly 20 feet high, weighing many tons. 

We are at once struck on observing the 
walls of this fortress, as well as those of others 
of the Inca buildings, with the remarkable 
character of the masonry, not so much by the 
size of the monoliths as by what is either a 
singular disregard of uniformity and alignment 
in the joints or is a curious, purposeful variation 
of these. Thus we see that each stone is an 
individual, not a counterpart • a polygon, not a 
cube. In some cases the stones are cut out to 
fit each other in a way such as must have involved 
much labour, especially when it is recollected 
that the Inca masons probably had no means of 
laying out angles ; so that presumably the stones 
were made to fit- each other by the laborious 
method of constantly removing and replacing. 
It might seem that this giving of an individuality 
of form to each stone was a nice and purposeful 
art, or carried out for some now unknown reason. 
Notwithstanding this diversity of surface, the 
contact between the stones is generally so perfect 
that a knife -blade cannot be inserted ; and there 
is no mortar . In some of the temples, it is stated 
by the Inca historian Garcilaso, gold and silver 
was used as a bedding material for the stones. 
Whatever may have been the reason for this 
lack of uniformity in the Inca masonry, it is 
singularly beautiful and unique, and the walls 



I 



166 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 

have well resisted the ravages of time and the 
elements. In the streets of Cuzco some well- 
preserved examples of Inca walls form part of 
modern buildings, as before mentioned. A good 
example is the wall which was the base of the 
Palace of Huayna Capac, one of the latest Inca 
emperors . Here massive stones are encountered, 
polygonal in form, fitting perfectly into each 
other. One of these, it will be observed, is a 
twelve-sided polygon. This wall forms part of 
an Inca street, which is used to-day. In the 
city of Cuzco there are other Inca buildings, 
notably the remains of what was the Temple of 
the Sun, with a curved front. Overlooking the 
valley we have also the singular steps or terraces, 
cut out of the living rock, which is termed " the 
seat of the Inca," and it is stated that the Inca 
Emperor took his seat here to watch the con- 
struction of the great fortress. 

Analogies have been drawn by some observers 
between the massive Inca stonework and that 
of Easter Island, and, indeed, with the stone- 
mason's art in Greece, as noted elsewhere. The 
Inca stonework was noteworthy in its character. 
" The world has nothing to show in the way of 
stone cutting and fitting to equal the skill and 
accuracy displayed in the Inca structures of 
Cuzco." 1 

At about a day's ride from Cuzco we reach 
the head of the Yucay Valley, and see its base 
4,000 feet below. Upon the slope of this 
remarkable valley — it is one of those which drain 
1 Encyc. Brit, " Peru." 




TYPES OF NATIVE WOMEN AT T LA. H U AN ACO , BOLIVIA. 



To face p. 1 66- 



THE INCAS 



167 



into the affluents of the Amazon — the ruins of 
another remarkable fortress are encountered — 
that of Ollantaytambo. This also consists of 
great terraces of Cyclopean masonry. We also 
observe here, in this structure, a common feature 
of Inca architecture — the series of niches in the 
walls, with their characteristic trapezoidal form, 
giving a unique and handsome effect. No style 
of building could accord so well with its environ- 
ment as these massive structures of the Incas. 
Possibly the builders were influenced by the 
mighty mountains which overhang their valleys, 
as I have before averred, and strove to adapt 
their work to the stupendous Andine archi- 
tecture on every hand, which they conceived per- 
haps as fashioned by the " Unknown God " to 
whom some of their temples were raised. 

Another remarkable group of ruins in the same 
region is that of Intihuatana and Pisac. The 
latter is another imposing fortress upon the summit 
of the mountains, a remarkable situation with an 
extensive view of the surrounding canons. But 
this fortress of Pisac had its own sacred pur- 
pose. It enclosed — and still encloses— the temple 
wherein stands the famous astronomical stone or 
pillar of Intihuatana. This word means in the 
Quechua tongue, " the seat or throne of the sun," 
or the place " where the sun's rays are collected." 
The pillar was, in fact, the instrument by which 
the Inca astronomer-priests determined the 
solstices. The column, now broken, but still 
existing, is worked out of the solid rock. It is 
enclosed by a circular tower, and in this the 



168 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



priests observed the shadow of the column upon 
an east and west line inscribed upon a circle 
which surrounded it. When the day approached 
great feasts were celebrated, and a golden stool 
was placed upon the shaft, so that " Inti," the 
sun, might " sit down " upon it, for the solstice. 
There were others of these astronomical pillars 
throughout Peru and Ecuador, but they were 
generally destroyed by the Spanish priests after 
the Conquest, as " things of the devil " ! The 
fortress and buildings surrounding the column- 
chamber are beautifully executed — stone-built 
corridors, halls, and chambers ; whilst the whole 
place, surrounded by beetling precipices and pro- 
tected by revetments of granite masonry, is 
impregnable. In the rock walls of the valley 
are seen ancient tombs in absolutely inaccessible 
positions to-day. These great fortresses com- 
manded the valleys leading down to the region 
of the Amazonian forests below, and were to 
protect Cuzco and the Empire from the incur- 
sions of the savage tribes dwelling there. Even 
to-day the forest region beyond the Andes is 
a savage, unexplored territory in great part, 
inhabited by bands of Indians, although the busi- 
ness of rubber-gathering is opening it up to some 
extent, and bringing in " civilisation " — if the 
particular kind of commerce sometimes carried 
out with an accompaniment of alcohol, rifle- 
bullets, abductions, and torture may be so 
termed ! 1 

1 A serious exposure of this matter was recently made con- 
cerning the Peruvian Amazon by the British Foreign Office. 



THE 1NCAS 



169 



The Incas penetrated but little into these dense 
Amazonian forests and valleys. There are, how- 
ever, evidences of some pre-historic activity in 
that vast region, and it may be that more 
extended exploration may unearth vestiges of 
some bygone culture. There are indications 
which almost cause the observer to ask if some 
powerful semi-civilisation did not at one time 
inhabit the forest region, and it has even been 
conjectured that the savage tribes are the 
degenerate remains of such. 

Perhaps the most interesting centre for the 
archaeologist — at any rate, it is the most ancient 
— is that of the ruins of Tiahuanaco, near the 
southern end of Lake Titicaca, about three hun- 
dred miles away from Cuzco on the border of 
Bolivia. Here we find ruins which in a sense 
are more remarkable than those of Cuzco, 
because far more antique. The temples and 
fortresses of Cuzco date only from the eleventh 
century, or later, of the Christian era, when the 
Inca dynasty came to being ; those of Tiahuanaco 
and others are of unknown age, and doubtless 
were built by the Aymaras at the time of their 
greatest culture before their overthrow, or even 
by predecessors of those people. Some writers, 
indeed, have maintained that they were con- 
temporaneous with Babylon or Assyria. But be 
it as it may, they are of a different type to that 
which the Inca stone-shaping art produced, and 
they form the ruins of the oldest city in the New 
World, here upon this high, bleak, sterile plateau 
of Titicaca, more than two miles vertically above 



170 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



the level of the sea, void of almost everything 
necessary for human life. 

The ruins of Tiahuanaco consist mainly of the 
outline of a great temple, shown by rows of 
upright monoliths, foundations, parts of stair- 
ways, a monolithic stone doorway, some colossal 
stone figures, and great stone platforms. A huge 
mound remains of what was formerly a truncated 
pyramid about 600 feet long, 400 feet wide, and 
50 feet high. Remains of terraces are seen, and 
squared stones are strewn about, remnants of 
these ruins. The stones of Tiahuanaco are in 
some cases carved with hieroglyphs or low reliefs, 
and this distinguishes the pre-Inca from the Inca 
period. 

The question has been raised of how these 
monoliths were transported to their site ; but if 
we take into account the hydrographic conditions 
of the site, which might have been formerly an 
island when Lake Titicaca was more extensive 
than even now, it is conceivable that they were 
floated to the spot, and possibly their quarries 
were nearer at hand than has been supposed. 
Indeed, the existence of former quarry sites has 
been established in the neighbouring hills. But, 
on the other hand, some of these monoliths, both 
here and at Cuzco, have been transported for 
great distances over the most broken country 
imaginable, and their carriage presents the same 
question as has been aroused concerning the 
monoliths of Egypt. We must, of course, take 
into account the hauling capacity of great bodies 
of Indians, acting under autocratic direction. 



THE INCAS 



171 



Near Cuzco is an enormous stone which had 
been abandoned on the road, and an Indian 
tradition says that the stone " wept tears of 
blood" at being left there. These great stones 
of Tiahuanaco, unlike the Inca walls, are in 
some cases very richly carved. The most 
remarkable of them is the monolithic doorway of 
Akapana, carved with a kind of frieze in bas- 
relief of figures, the central one of which has 
been taken by Peruvian archaeologists to repre- 
sent the mystic deity Huirakocha. Some of the 
lesser figures have human bodies, hands, and 
feet ; some human heads, others heads of 
condors ; some wear crowns and carry sceptres, 
and they appear to be in an attitude of adoration 
of the central figure, which itself holds sceptres, 
carved with the heads of tigers and condors, 
which were probably symbolical of strength and 
power. This central figure of Huirakocha (or 
Viracocha) was the supreme god of the Andine 
people, typical of the " Abyss of the Waters," 
as was " Ea " among the Chaldeans. Among 
other notable monoliths of this group is a stone 
image, about twice the height of a man, which 
stands upon the plain. One hand of the figure 
holds a fish sculptured against its breast, a feature 
of much archaeological importance, to which 
reference is made elsewhere. An analogy has 
been drawn by some observers with the remains 
on Easter Island, later described. 

It is a regrettable thing that these ruins of 
Tiahuanaco are being destroyed, forming, as they 
do, one of the most interesting chapters in the 



172 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



little-known history of early Peru. The buildings 
have been ruthlessly despoiled of their stones, 
first by the Spaniards for church-building, and 
later by modern vandals, especially the builders 
of the Guaqui-La Paz railway, who, it is stated, 
" have taken away within the last ten years more 
than five hundred trainloads of stone for building 
its bridges and warehouses." 1 Many valuable 
antiquities, however, are preserved in the Bolivian 
Government Museum at La Paz. 

Both Cuzco and Tiahuanaco can be reached 
by rail, the former place being now the terminus 
of the new extension of the line. 

Upon the islands of Lake Titicaca there are 
other remarkable ruins, both Inca and pre-Inca. 
From this island it was that Manco Capac, the 
first Inca, whose virgin birth as a redeemer of 
man is part of the Inca mythology, set out to 
civilise the savage tribes of the Andes, as before 
described. There are other remains on this 
island, as also upon that of Coati, ruined 
temples to the sun and the moon. In the Titicaca 
region there is also the remarkable ruin known 
as the " Temple of Huirakocha " — huge walls 
which probably were never completed ; work of 
the Aymaras, upon which possibly these people 
were engaged when overthrown. For further 
descriptions of these places the reader may be 
referred to my other books, 2 and to those even 
more detailed works of other authors. 

1 "Across South America," Bingham, 1911. 

2 " The Andes and the Amazon," London, 1907. Also 
"Peru." 



THE INCAS 



173 



Still in Southern Peru there are other extensive 
ruins of Inca towns and fortresses, of which but 
little is known. Among these may be mentioned 
that of Choqquequirau, 1 an Inca structure with 
some similarity to that of Huanuco Viejo, later 
described. 

Recently explorations 2 have been undertaken 
in Peru, and further discoveries or examinations 
of little-known ruins are being made, and know- 
ledge of these matters may be extended. Ex- 
plorations in these regions have a certain 
advantage, in that the Inca and pre-Inca remains 
of buildings are generally situated in rocky places 
uncovered by vegetation, and not, as in the case 
of Babylonian and other remains, covered up by 
drift or sand or by volcanic ash. The main 
difficulties of their approach consist rather in 
their inaccessible and remote positions. 

There are many other remains of the mega- 
lithic structures of Inca and pre-Inca times 
scattered about the Sierra or mountain region, 
including those almost obliterated ones at 
Ayacucho ; and at Huaitara, between the Titicaca 
region and the coast, are some sculptured mono- 
liths to which little attention has been paid. In 
the northern part of Peru the Inca remains 
become abundant, and they, as well as the coast 
ruins, are considered in the following chapter. 

Mention has been made of the religion of the 
Incas. They were sun-worshippers, but this em- 
bodied, or was part of, a chaste and earnest 

1 " Across South America," Bingham, 191 1. 

2 The Yale Expedition, see Appendix, 191 1. 



174 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



religion of a much deeper character — a religion, 
indeed, which might have inspired the beneficent 
laws which governed the Empire and its social 
system, described in a subsequent chapter. They 
imagined a Supreme Being, an " Unknown God " 
who pervaded everything, but who, they recog- 
nised, could have no visible or tangible likeness 
or form. At Cuzco the image of the Creator was 
represented by an elliptical plate of gold set on 
the wall of the temple. Among the Incas this 
Being was addressed as Huirakocha, and the 
same conception was embodied in the name 
" Pachacamac," which, translated, means " He 
who gives animation to the universe," and con- 
veyed the idea of a Creator of all things. This 
underlying belief in a Supreme Being was, it 
is held, derived by the Incas from an earlier 
culture. The Inca " prayer to the Creator " 1 
may be instanced as well representative of this 
religion, and the following is an extract : — 

" Oh, Creator ; oh, conquering Huirakocha ! 
ever-present Huirakocha ; Thou who art with- 
out equal unto the ends of the earth ; who givest 
life and strength to mankind, saying, ' Let this 
be a man, and let this be a woman ' ; and as thou 
sayest, so thou givest life, and dost vouchsafe 
that men shall dwell in peace and health. Thou 
who dwellest in the heights of heaven and in 
the storm-clouds, hear us. Grant us eternal life, 
and have us in thy keeping." 

1 From the records of Molina, a Spanish priest of Cuzco 
written for the Bishop of Cuzco, Artaun, between 1570 and 
1584. See the translation of Markham, Hakluyt Series. 




MONOLITHIC FIGURE. 
Ruins of Tiahuanaco, Bolivia. 



To face p. 174. 



CHAPTER X 



PERU— THE LAND OF ENIGMAS 

Northern Peru — Quito — Huaraz and Cajamarca — Pre-Inca 
remains — The Upper Maranon — Castle of Chavin — Sub- 
terranean chambers and monoliths — The " Gentiles " — 
The ancient fortresses — The andenes — Former population 
— Ruins of Huanuco Vie jo — Beautiful stone doorways — 
The Inca palace and fortress — Ancient town — Analogy 
with Egyptian structure ? — Cliff-towers and graves — 
Caves and mummy-cellars — The ancient ruins of the 
coast region — Pachacamac — The only example of 
columns — The Chimus and ruins of Chan Chan — Incas 
and pre-Incas — Copper tools — Roofs — Embalming the 
dead — The Huacas — Mummy-hunting — Peruvian pottery 
seven thousand years old ? — Beautiful ceramic art — 
Asiatic origin ? — Mongolian ancestors — Analogies with 
China — Mysterious unread hieroglyphics. 

The region last described, that which has Cuzco 
as its centre, is enormously removed, of course, 
from Central America and Mexico, but the Inca 
Empire and the pre-Inca culture extended north- 
wardly from the Titicac region, its real home, for 
more than twelve hundred miles to Quito, in 
Ecuador, and it is not difficult to conceive that 
there may have been some communication 
between the Inca and the Maya cultures, as 
hinted elsewhere. 

It is the northern extension of the Inca empire 

175 



176 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



that we must consider here. Huaraz and Caja- 
marca are two important cities in this region, 
the first being some four hundred miles and the 
second some six hundred miles from Cuzco, both 
on the road to Quito, yet another four hundred 
miles beyond. Portions of the Inca road still 
serve as modern trails, and, indeed, the trails 
have been scarcely improved since the horses 
of Pizarro's band first ascended the Andes. 

Huaraz is a typical interior Andine town, 
10,000 feet above sea-level, and overhung by the 
snowy Cordillera to the east. Three days' mule- 
riding, over some of the most execrable trails in 
the world, reaching an elevation of 14,000 feet, 
take the traveller into the valley of Huaylas, 
where Huaraz is situated. The town can also 
be reached by a three-days' journey, over roads 
equally bad, crossing the main range of the 
snowy Cordillera, from railhead at Cerro de 
Pasco, the terminus of a branch line of the Oroya 
railway. I explored an untried pass over the 
perpetual snow-cap near Huaraz at the request 
of the authorities, for the purpose of construction 
of a new road. 1 A railway has long been planned 
for the valley of Huaraz or Huaylas, but has 
never been carried out. 

There are many vestiges of the Inca and pre- 
Inca cultures in this neighbourhood. At Huaraz 
existed a square fortress formerly, with sculp- 
tured walls " showing figures of men greater than 
natural size. Also the animals and flowers 
carved upon the walls and other ancient ruins 
1 See " The Andes and the Amazon." 



PERU 



177 



are tokens of great antiquity." 1 The aboriginal 
empire of the pre-Incas must have been strongly 
established in this neighbourhood. Into the 
adobe walls of the cemetery at Huaraz are built 
ancient stones with Inca masks, and a few miles 
away is a singular underground chamber, which 
I examined, and from which some gold and other 
objects, including sea-shells, were taken. 2 

The region of the Upper Maranon is still more 
remote — two days' ride from Huaraz to the east. 
Upon the way an Inca pass of rock-hewn steps 
is traversed, at an elevation of nearly i 5,000 feet 
above sea -level, and this range forms the water- 
parting of South America. 3 Descending thence 
to the east, we reach a small affluent of the 
Maranon, spanned by a monolithic Inca bridge, 
with sculptured heads built into the pillars, and 
approach the Castle of Chavin. This castle, 
which I examined, is largely in ruins, but there 
are numerous singular underground chambers 
and passages, the purpose of whose construction 
it is difficult to understand, and time did not 
permit me an extended exploration. The walls 
are of blocks of hewn stone. But the main 
point of interest here is the singular carved 
monoliths, doubtless of pre-Inca origin, which 
exist or existed here. One of these, a beautifully 
carved stone about twice the height of a man, 
was transported over the Andes and down to 
Lima, on the coast, where it stands in the Exhi- 
bition Park. Another, in the form of a column, 

1 " El Peru en 1906," Lima. 
2 , 3 Illustrated in " The Andes and the Amazon." 
12 



178 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



with carved snake -heads upon it, yet remains 
in place in a subterranean chamber, and there 
I examined it. Chavin is of the pre-Inca period, 
or at least these bas-reliefs are. 

The whole of this remote region of the Upper 
Marafion is dotted with the ruined dwellings of 
the former occupiers of the land. Houses, 
terraces, fortresses, of unhewn stone, sometimes 
in the most inaccessible positions, upon high 
ridges, towards which the night-mist from the 
Marafion rolls up in fleecy folds like a mysterious 
pall, and from it these ruined castles and walls; 
start suddenly as we behold them, like the ghosts 
of the dwellings of a vanished race — which in- 
deed they are — weird and unique. I have, upon 
my expeditions with my men and mules, often 
been obliged to sleep in these ruined places, 
sheltering from rain and snow, in the absence 
of other habitation. The disposal of these 
numerous ruins, often about a central fortress 
commanding the heads of valleys, and sur- 
rounded by the abandoned andenes or ter- 
raced fields of these people, goes to show that 
the inhabitants lived as clans, or " Gentiles," and 
their ruined dwellings are termed by the Indians 
of the Andes to-day " casas de los Gentiles," 
or " houses of the Gentiles." 

These andenes, or one-time cultivated ter- 
races, are a striking feature of the Andes ; they 
were so termed by the Spaniards, and have fur- 
nished one origin of the name of the mountains. 
I have journeyed among these interminable 
slopes in many parts of Peru, and 1 marked the 



-BAS-RELIEF FROM CHAVIN, NORTHERN PERU, 
OF FIGURES WITH SCEPTRES. 



To face p. 178. 



PERU 



179 



vestiges of ancient cultivation on the sides of 
these profound and interminable valleys, where 
only scattered Indian hamlets and mouldering 
ruins exist to-day. This part of Peru offers no 
field for the mere tourist. There are no 
approaches to it by railway, such as at Cuzco 
and Tiahuanaco. The traveller whose fortune 
it is to traverse the remote region of the Andes 
of Peru and Bolivia, but especially of the former 
country, will constantly be reminded of the 
existence of a population long ago, where to-day 
all is silent and desolate. Nothing has more 
strongly impressed me in the long periods 
spent in those elevated regions than the evi- 
dences of the intensive way in which the soil 
was cultivated by the early Peruvians. Sitting 
astride our mules on some high ridge as the 
sunset shadows fall athwart those little -known 
valleys of the great Cordillera, we may mark 
how the declining light touches the inequalities of 
the distant slopes, giving a singular rippled or 
chequered appearance. This effect is caused by 
the innumerable terraces or andenes, the small 
fields, one above the other up the precipitous 
hillsides, fashioned in a way such as must be 
seen to be believed. 

The andenes are formed by the method of ex- 
cavating the soil on the upper side and embank- 
ing it on the lower, the earthwork thus levelled 
being surrounded on three sides with rough 
masonry retaining walls, slightly battered, as in 
the case of all stonework of the Inca period.] 
Above the first anden a second was made, fol- 



180 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



lowed by another, and so on until the whole 
mountain-side was covered, like a gigantic flight 
of stairs. In some districts every hill-slope is 
or has been so covered, and the terraces must 
have numbered millions. The lowest of these 
terraces are naturally the largest, in conformity 
with the usual slope of a hill, and they diminish 
in size as they go upwards, ascending thousands 
of feet often, from the level of plains and streams 
up to where they are hidden in clouds and mists. 
In some cases, on the steep ravines or semi- 
precipitous slopes the top terraces are of a size 
such as gave room only for two or three rows of 
maize, so industrious were the people and so 
highly was land considered. Moreover, they 
were served by an irrigation channel, and these, 
as before mentioned, were at times many miles 
in length. A conduit of this nature must be of 
a considerable length necessarily, to " gain alti- 
tude " from its source in the river. These 
terraces and aqueducts are found throughout 
Peru and the Andine region generally. 

As we regard these evidences of past handi- 
work we shall reflect that a population that 
carried out such enterprises must have been far 
more numerous than the scanty inhabitants of 
the Andes to-day. Indeed, it has been calculated 
that the population of the Inca Empire at the 
zenith of its fortunes might have reached 
90,000,000.^ This is palpably an absurdity ; but; 
there can be no doubt — and it is, in fact, a matter 
of history — that a population many times greater 
than the 3,000,000 of Eeru to-day must have 



PERU 



181 



had their being in those mysterious uplands, 
where, since the advent of the Spaniard, only 
scattered villages and mouldering ruins exist. 

The principal group of ruins in this part of 
Peru, apart from Chavin, is that of Huanuco 
Viejo, of which I made a special study. It stands 
upon a broad, flat plain upon an arm of the 
Maranon, at an elevation of about 12,000 feet 
above sea-level, and consists of an extensive 
palace, a fortress or temple of the sun, baths, 
and an extensive village of streets, with a sin- 
gular series of round and square dwellings, alter- 
nating, in long rows. The chief architectural 
feature of the buildings is a series of stone door- 
ways, really beautiful examples of Inca masonry, 
and the castle or temple. In the palace there 
are six of these doorways, all standing in a line 
at considerable distances apart, so that the 
observer who takes his stand in front of one of 
them is enabled to see through the whole series. 
The line so taken through them is about east and 
west. The total length across the courtyards or 
halls to which these doorways give access is 
about 400 feet. The doorways are of typical 
Inca tapering or trapezoidal form, with quoins 
and lintels of beautifully fitted stones, the latter 
of the more or less polygonal form previously 
described, and so closely fitted that a knife-blade 
cannot be inserted in the joints. No mortar has 
been used. The lintels are monoliths of nearly 
7 feet in length in some cases, and the thickness 
is about 3 feet, which is that of the walls of 
which they form part. The characteristic 



182 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



niches, also of- trapezoidal form, are a marked 
feature of the walls of these ruins. The same 
niches are found elsewhere in the Inca 
buildings, as, for example, at Ollantaytambo. 

The castle, which stands in the centre of what 
was a huge square, around which the palace or 
palaces are disposed, is a building of different 
character. It is rectangular in form, about 
100 feet wide and 170 feet long, very solidly 
constructed of cut stone blocks surmounted by 
a icornice, whose moulding is composed of a 
fillet and cavetto, as in the Doric order. The 
whole plain in the vicinity is covered with the 
ruins of small habitations, generally of unhewn 
stone. All the masonry of these ruins is com- 
posed of blocks of silicious limestone, which have 
been extracted from a stratified hill at the edge 
of the plain. In this castle or temple, whichever 
it were, some similarity to Egyptian form may 
perhaps be traced. 

This plain and its hills, and the ruins of the 
palaces, castles, and dwellings are absolutely un- 
inhabited, except for an occasional Indian shep- 
herd, and these, I was informed by my men, 
occasionally vary that occupation by horse- 
stealing. I pitched my tent under the shelter 
of the palace walls, and in the night a commo- 
tion among my mules seemed to suggest that 
some prowling robber might be about ; and as 
a warning I lifted up a corner of the tent canvas 
and fired a couple of revolver shots up into the 
night air. When morning dawned we found 
tracks of sandalled feet, but nothing was missing. 



PERU 



183 



I sketched the chief features of the place, and rode 
along the abandoned streets of the Inca village, 
where even as late as the time of the Conquest, it 
was stated by the brother of Pizarro, who visited 
them, the Incas maintained a population of 
30,000 souls. Now the wild oats wave above 
the entablature of the palace of the Incas, and 
the declining rays of the sun fall softly across 
the ruined walls as I ascend the range of 
hills above the Maranon. These ruins of 
Huanuco Vie jo are of much interest, and, as 
far as I am aware, they had never been pre- 
viously depicted. 1 My photographic films had 
become exhausted, and I have only my sketches 
to illustrate them, which, however, were made 
with exactitude. One remarkable fact we must 
recollect with regard to these great stone struc- 
tures of the high plateaux— they are in a region 
at a vast elevation above sea -level, where there 
is little vegetation, absolutely no timber, except 
a few bushes in the ravines, and where corn or 
other cereals will not ripen. 2 

Beyond this point the old Inca highway 
descends to the river by a stairway of rough - 
hewn stones and traverses an arm of Lake Lauri- 
cocha, the main source of the Maranon, over a 
stone causeway of Inca construction. On every 
hand are the remains of the andenes, some 
of them still cultivated, whilst the ruins of the 

1 They were, however, visited by the well-known Peruvian 
traveller Raimondi half a century ago. 

2 For plans and further sketches of these ruins, see my 
paper in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society. 



184 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



old clan castles where these sturdy highland 
chiefs lived, either previous to or contempo- 
raneous with the Inca regimen, catch our eyes 
at every turn. Round towers and square towers 
on the edges of beetling cliffs we mark, and a 
mysterious row of towers on a hilltop, practically 
inaccessible, whilst amid crags and rock-strata 
are Inca burial-places, tenanted by skulls and 
bones. The Indians often fear to enter these 
caves and cellars, and at times earnestly advised 
me not to do so, averring that some evil befalls 
those who meddle with the resting-places of the 
dead. The same experience befell me indeed 
in Mexico, and naturally the thoughtful traveller 
behaves with the utmost tact in such circum- 
stances. 

Cajamarca lies much more to the north and 
is reached from the coast. A line of railway 
was begun long ago from the seaport, but died 
a natural death after crossing the coast -zone and 
reaching the base of the Cordillera. It was here 
that Atahualpa, the last reigning Inca chief, was 
treacherously betrayed by Pizarro and bar- 
barously done to death, notwithstanding the 
" golden vessels of Jerusalem," or rather Cuzco, 
that had been desecrated for his ransom, and 
conveyed thither from all parts of the empire to 
fill his prison chamber. 

We must now leave the highlands or Sierra, 
and descend to the lowlands of the Pacific, and 
here very different climatic and topographical 
conditions await us. Here are rainless deserts 
and irrigated valleys ; the Andes are but a faint, 



PERU 



185 



grey, serrated edge on the eastern horizon, and 
on this flat littoral it seems impossible that we 
had battled with icy gales two or three miles 
above the level of the sea, or traversed those 
high, bleak punas on the roof of the world. 

The principal ruins of the Incas, pre-Incas, 
and other semi-civilised former occupants of the 
coast, are mainly of buildings constructed of 
adobe, and have remained — where they have 
remained at all — due to the dry climatic con- 
ditions as before mentioned. The most famous 
of these ruins formerly was that of Pachacamac, 
which at the time of the Conquest was a splendid 
temple raised to the " Unknown God," and great 
spoil of golden vessels and plates was secured 
from this place by the Spaniards in the ransom 
of Atahualpa. The name " Pachacamac " signi- 
fies in Quechua — the language of the Andine 
people — " He who gives animation to the 
Universe." To-day nothing remains of this 
great temple but a mound of rubbish, a day's 
ride from Lima. Proceeding along the coast- 
zone to the south, we shall reach a group of ruins 
known as " Incahuasi " or " the house of the 
Inca." These, unlike the coast ruins generally, 
are of stone, although they lack the beautiful 
workmanship of the mural remains we have 
visited in the Andes. But they are unique in 
one respect — they contain a row of columns. 
This is an architectural feature absolutely lack- 
ing in the Inca and pre-Inca ruins elsewhere, 
for, except in this case, the column was appar- 
ently unknown to the Andine people, as was the 



186 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 

arch. The columns of Incahuasi are not mono- 
liths, however. The building probably dates 
from the fifteenth century. Still farther to the 
south, slightly inland from the port of Pisco, 
we encounter an extensive group of adobe ruins 
in a good state of preservation, consisting of 
long walls with characteristic trapezoidal-formed 
doors and niches, and corridors, halls, and rough 




RUINS OF INCAHUASI. 



stone foundations. I took a careful sketch of 
these features. The niches are still covered with 
some red pigment, possibly vermilion from the 
great quicksilver mines of Huncavelica (which I 
visited), in the Andes to the east, for vermilion 
was obtained from the cinnabar to paint the faces 
of Inca beauties, we are told by Garcilaso, the 
Inca historian. 

Still farther south in this coast -zone of Peru 



PERU 



187 



I encountered remains of long aqueducts, a line 
traceable for eighty miles along the hill-slopes, 
for the Incas were expert in hydraulics and 
irrigation works. There are other long ruined 
aqueducts in other parts of the country. 

In the northern part of the coast -zone we come 
to the region where the Chimu people flourished, 
who were overthrown by the Incas. They were 
a powerful, semi-civilised coast people, and 
numerous ruins attest their skill in mural con- 
struction. Among these the most notable are 
the ruins of Chan-Chan, whose walls show florid 
decorations, elaborated in cement. 1 These ruins 
are not far from the modern city of Trujillo, and 
would repay careful study. It is interesting to 
compare the decorations of these walls with some 
of the patterns on ancient Egyptian costumes, 
and with those on Persian carpets, and to en- 
deavour to trace a similarity in their form. Very 
recently a great quantity of pottery of the pre- 
Inca period and of the most beautiful workman- 
ship was unearthed in the Chicama Valley in this 
district, mentioned elsewhere, its age being con- 
jectured at seven thousand years. 

As we have seen, the Inca and pre-Inca archi- 
tecture differ much to those who have made a 
study of them. The first lack any iconographic 
carvings, such as we have seen at Tiahuanaco 
and Chavin, whilst in the latter we do not 
observe the polygonal-shaped wall stones. 
Monoliths of considerable size were common to 
both ; one of those at Cuzco is 27 feet long, 
1 See illustration. 



188 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



1 5 feet wide, and 1 2 feet long, and there are 
others of almost equal size. The stones vary 
as to their geological composition according to 
the region ; some are of granite, as at Cuzco, 
some of trachyte, sandstone, or basalt, whilst 
Others are of a hard, silicious limestone. It is to 
be recollected that this remarkable stone-shaping 
was performed without the use of iron ; but 
the Incas possessed bronze, termed chumpe, and 
copper tools, examples of which are occasionally 
recovered in the ancient quarries. Indeed, they 
were skilled metallurgists in copper, gold, and 
silver, as more fully described in a subsequent 
chapter. " Analysis of their copper or bronze 
has given 93 per cent, copper, 6 per cent, tin, 
and 1 per cent, silica." 1 These metals, it will be 
recollected, are abundant in Peru, Bolivia, and 
Chile. As regards stone -shaping, there is a 
curious legend among the Indians that the Incas 
were able to mould stones by means of using 
the juice of some herb. 2 

As previously stated, the Incas were un- 
acquainted with the arch, but nevertheless they 
constructed dome or " beehive " roofs, both to 
their tombs, at times, and to their conical houses, 
whether of stone or adobe. They also employed 
the principle of corbelling-out over openings, and 
to form the abutments of small bridges. In 
general terms the principal characteristic of the 
Inca architecture is its great solidity. It would 
seem that the builders were animated by religious 

1 " El Peru in 1906," Lima. 

2 See my " Andes and the Amazon." 



PERU 



189 



motives and by the desire to bequeath to posterity 
these chapters in stone of their history, and, 
indeed, it is safe to ( say that these may be 
expected to outlast any of the modern structures 
of America, whether the architectural work of 
colonial Spain — good and solid as this is gener- 
ally — or whether the " skyscraper " system of the 
Anglo-Saxon on the Northern Continent. Solid 
as these walls are, however, the roofs of the 
large buildings have perished long ago, as their 
builders do not appear to have been able to 
advance beyond sloping roofs of poles covered 
with grass thatch, or, at any rate, in the absence 
of anything else we can only assume this to 
have been the case. Their buildings, with small 
exception, are never of more than one story. 
Nor were they acquainted with the use of 
burnt brick, although their ceramic art was an 
advanced one, as we know from the beautiful 
and abundant Inca pottery. In the shape of 
their vases (as well as in the form of some of 
their buildings) they showed a curious know- 
ledge of acoustics. There were no doors to the 
houses, the openings being covered with a mat, 
and, indeed, there could have been little of 
comfort or luxury, in the modern sense, about 
these habitations. The interiors of the temples 
were sometimes covered with plates of gold, of 
which the Spaniards secured great booty. 

It is held to be a mystery how the early Peru- 
vians embalmed their dead. The bodies of the 
Inca emperors, " according to eye-witnesses and 
the Spanish historians, still preserved the features 



190 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



unaltered, the skin smooth and soft, and the flesh 
in its entirety after the lapse of centuries." 1 
Mummies were sometimes left in a sitting 
posture, in caves. The burial-places and mummy- 
cellars of these people are found all over Peru. 
Innumerable small square chambers, built of 
rough stone, are generally the receptacle of the 
mummies, and to-day these huacas are constantly 
discovered, when buried, by the method of 
sounding the earth with an iron rod, when the 
lack of resistance encountered indicates the 
presence of a mummy . Numbers of these places 
exist, both on the coast and in the mountains. 

The earliest evidences of man in Peru are in 
kitchen -middens and fireplace stones on the 
coast. At a much later period, but whose date 
it is impossible yet to fix, there existed on the 
coast, especially between Samanco, in the north 
of Peru, and Nasca, in the south, groups of civi- 
lised tribes of whom nothing is known, except 
from their ceramic utensils and textile fabrics, 
found in the deepest layers of the soil. 

As to pottery, this is very plentiful, and of 
beautiful form. A remarkable find of beautiful 
pottery in great abundance recently, shows how 
advanced these pre-Inca people must have been 
in ceramic art. The illustrations given here are 
of those unearthed in the Chicama valley, near 
Trujillo, three or four years ago. 2 The date 
of this pottery was conjectured as a very remote 
one, but that it was of so great an age remains 

1 " El Peru en 1906," Lima. 
9 By Mr. Myrine. 



PERU 



191 



to be proved. " The 750 examples of prehistoric 
pottery prove that there existed on the western 
slopes of the Andes, some seven thousand years 
ago, a civilisation that was of a much higher 
type than any that had been thought possible. 
The pottery dates, it is claimed, from 5000 B.C. ; 
some are inclined to date it as far back as 
10,000 B.C." ; says one account. 1 

This pottery was taken from a tumulus, some 
three miles in extent, which was found to con- 
tain about two thousand graves of the Chimus 
people. Much of it is exceedingly beautiful and 
curious, and its delicacy of colouring, high finish, 
and remarkable state of preservation are note- 
worthy. 

As regards Peruvian pottery in general, of 
the pre-Hispanic period, the pieces commonly 
unearthed from the sand and tombs are veritable 
works of art, and the traveller will be unable 
to resist the temptation to form a collection. He 
must beware, however, of the beginnings of a 
spurious art in imitation. 

It may have been that the coast civilisation 
preceded that which proceeded from Tiahuanaco, 
the main centre of the pre-Inca culture, although 
the similarity of design on the pottery and fabrics 
unearthed at both places shows that they may 
have been allied. This civilisation, which was 
responsible for the pre-Inca buildings, must have 
advanced as an immense wave over the whole 
of the Peru of to-day, reaching on the north 

1 From a description in the Illustrated London News, 
December, 1909. 



192 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



beyond Ecuador as far as Columbia and on the 
south to Chile, and to the east as far as Tucman 
and the Gran Chaco in the Argentine Republic. 
What of its origin? " As regards the origin of 
the tribes or people which came to Peru and 
inhabited it, after men whose traces we find along 
the coast in kitchen-middens, &c, the greater part 
of the persons who have studied the matter in 
all its bearings have come to the conclusion that 
they were of Asiatic origin. We may reasonably 
attribute an Asiatic origin to the first half- 
civilised people of our soil. Moreover, many 
physiognomic peculiarities of the Indians betray 
their Mongolian origin and make them similar 
to the Chinese and Japanese, to which families 
they perhaps belong. In corroboration of this 
supposition we have surprising similarity between 
the adornments and artistic patterns which we 
meet with in the woven textures and pottery-work 
of the ancient Peruvians and those of the Mayas, 
who occupied the whole peninsula of Yucatan, 
as well as part of Chiapas and Tabasco, to whom 
the men of science in Mexico attribute likewise 
Mongolian origin." 1 

This supposition also gains force, according to 
the above writer, from the analogy of some of 
the customs of the ancient Peruvians with those 
of the Chinese. Agriculture was the basis of 
social administration both of the Chinese and 
the early Peruvians. During the rule of the 
empire of the Incas great festivals were cele- 
brated, that of Hatun Raini and of Capaccocha, 
1 " El Peru en 1906," Lima. 



PERU 193 

at the time of the equinoxes and solstices ; the 
former to render thanks to the Supreme Being — 
that is, the sun in the Inca belief — for benefits 
received, and the latter to pray for a fruitful 
following season. At one of these festivals the 
Inca Emperor ploughed with his own hands 
a piece of sacred land, just as during similar 
festivals in China the Emperor ploughs (or did 
plough) consecrated ground with a silver plough. 

Whatever may be the value of these analogies 
it is evident that Peruvians of to-day believe, 
to a large extent, that their country in early times 
was peopled from Asia. There are other evi- 
dences of very remote happenings in this vast 
region of the Pacific and the Andes. On the hills 
near Tacna in Tarapaca, between Peru and Chile, 
are " the remains of hieroglyphics of enormous 
dimensions, perfectly visible at a considerable 
distance, written in vertical lines, like Chinese 
writing. At eight leagues to the north-west at 
Arequipa may be seen engraved upon granite, on 
the heights of La Caldera, figures of men and 
animals, straight and curved lines, parallelograms, 
and even certain kinds of crosses and letters. 
Time has blotted out a number of inscriptions, 
but a great many are still sufficiently visible. 
The situation of these hieroglyphics in solitary 
spots, devoid of any ruins in their vicinity, or 
of any tombs corresponding to the Inca civilisa- 
tion, proves that they were carved previous to 
the empire and that they are evident signs of 
the existence of a very ancient civilisation." 1 
1 " El Peru en 1906," Lima, 

13 



194 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



In the discussion upon a paper which I read 
before one of the learned associations of 
London, 1 some of the speakers compared cer- 
tain similarities of ornament and construction in 
the views shown on the screen with outside 
sources, such as the " extraordinary resemblance 
of some of the walls to those in Greece, as also 
what was known as the Greek fret, which, how- 
ever, existed in other countries independently." 
Another speaker drew some analogy with the 
Cyclopean walls of the prehistoric cities of 
Mycenas and Tiryns, and the legends of the 
Argives as to their building. Such analogies 
were, however, doubtless romantic. 2 It is, per- 
haps, worthy of mention in passing that the 
polygonal -shaped wall stones of the Inca 
masonry, as depicted at Cuzco and Huanuco 
Viejo, &c, are seen in Japanese walls .3 

As to the " Greek " pattern, pictured else- 
where 4 the exact form of the Peruvian and 
Mexican design is common as a decoration 
around the pedestals of idols in some parts of 
China to-day. 5 

In a subsequent chapter Peruvian -Asiatic 
analogies are further advanced and discussed, 
with arguments both for and against. 

1 Architectural Association, November, 1909. 

2 See Architectural Association Journal, January, 1910. 

3 For an example see Awake, magazine of the Church 
Missionary Society, December, 191 1, "Japanese Temple." 

« P. 244. 

s See illustrations in 11 Present Conditions in China," 
National Geographic Magazine, Washington, December 1911, 



PRE-INCA POTTERY FROM TOMB IN THE CHICAMA VALLEY, 
COAST OF PERU. 



To face p. 194. 



CHAPTER XI 



A PREHISTORIC SOCIALISM 

A remarkable social system — The Inca land laws — " Superior 
to all Christian nations" — Small holdings in early Peru — 
The land for the (prehistoric) people ! — No beggary 
permitted — Common ownership of natural resources — 
The guano — Public water rights — No monopolies allowed 
— Inca hydraulics — Wonderful irrigation system — The 
andenes — Socialistic agriculture — Neighbourly assistance 
— No Tammanyism ! — Help for widows — Tax-payments 
in goods and labour — Boots instead of rates — Hallelujah 
— Public granaries — Precautions against famine — Corn 
reserves — Scientific colonisation — The fall of the Inca 
socialism — Hints for Britain. 

It is a remarkable thing that in the remote fast- 
nesses of a huge mountain system of a 
continent unknown to the civilised world of 
Europe and Asia four hundred years ago, the 
Andes of South America, a civilisation of so 
unique and beneficent a character should have 
existed as caused one of the most famous of 
the historians of the Conquest to exclaim that 
" laws so beneficent have never been enjoyed 
by any country under any Christian monarch, 
or under any kings whether of Asia, Africa, or 
Europe." 1 These things are not exaggeration ; 



1 Garcilasso de la Vega. 

195 



196 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



proofs and records of the Inca social system 
sufficiently establish their truth. 

Before leaving Peru, therefore, let us cast a 
glance at the land laws, system' of tax payments, 
disposal of national, natural, and Imperial re- 
sources, colonisation, fraternity, and so forth, of 
the Inca Empire — matters not without value for 
consideration by the empires of the twentieth 
century. 

Most important of all, perhaps, were the land 
laws — those concerning land tenure and cultiva- 
tion. The Inca emperors, directly they subjected 
a new territory — and it is to be recollected that 
they increased their possessions enormously by 
conquering the surrounding more or less savage 
tribes of the slopes and uplands of the Andean 
regions — immediately instituted the equitable 
system of land tenure of their own homeland. 
The land was first measured and divided into 
three sections : the first part for the sun, the 
second for the king, and the third for the people 1 
— that is to say, Church, State, and people each 
received its share. This system was carried out 
in every province and village, care being taken 
that there should be an excess rather than an 
insufficiency of land for the inhabitants of each 
and every such district. When the population 
increased land was taken from the areas belong- 
ing to the sun and the king and allotted to the 
people, the sun and king retaining in their share 
such lands as were desert or uncultivable. 

1 See Garcilasso, " Rites and Laws of the Incas," Haklnyt 
Series, Markham's translation. 



I A PREHISTORIC SOCIALISM 197 

To each married peasant was granted an area 
of land sufficient for his maintenance, called a 
tupu, which was regarded as the unit of measure- 
ment. When children were born a further area 
was granted, in the ratio of one tupu for each 
boy and half a tupu for each girl. Upon the 
boy's marriage the tupu was handed over to him 
but the girls, when married, did not take their 
tupu, which remained with the father or reverted 
to the State. 

No one was allowed to bay or sell land. It 
reverted to the State on the death of its owner. 1 

Thus, under the Inca system the important 
principle was observed that every individual had 
a right to his or her area of land ; that land 
was the property of the community, and could 
not be privately monopolised or looked upon as 
a merchantable commodity. 

No less were natural resources forbidden to be 
monopolised, as is well shown by the laws for 
the use of the valuable land fertiliser known as 
guano, a peculiar product of the Peruvian coast, 
and by the State ownership of gold-mines, &c. 2 

This guano is the product — the droppings — 
of the innumerable sea-birds which haunt the 
coast and islands of that part of South America. 
We can observe them from the deck of the 
steamer to-day, flying low on the surface of the 
water in such numbers that they appear like 

1 I venture to commend a consideration of this to our 
modern land-monopolists. 

2 This ancient matter of national ownership of national 
resources is one which modern nations might well consider. 



198 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



clouds, and, indeed, must be seen to be believed. 
In the time of the Incas it was unlawful to molest 
these birds or trespass upon their grounds at 
breeding -time. The guano -covered land looks 
from a distance, as we approach the islands or 
promontories where it chiefly abounds, like peaks 
of snowy mountains, and in the coast regions it 
was used to fertilise the sterile soils. 

These guano deposits were carefully assigned 
to certain districts, and marked out for the use 
of each village or locality, and any person who 
misappropriated the substance was punished. 

As with the laws concerning land and ferti- 
liser, so it was with those relating to water, that 
necessary concomitant of agriculture in the torrid 
zone, where irrigation is necessary due to the 
scanty rainfall. 

In those parts of the country where the avail- 
able supply of water was limited — and they em- 
braced the vast region of the coast zone — the 
flow of streams was gauged and utilised with 
great care, conducted in irrigation conduits or 
channels, fashioned by Government engineers, 
and allotted to the agriculturist by measure. 
Experience had shown the necessary quantity of 
water required to irrigate each unit of land, 
and a time -flow was given for each in turn, 
" and neither the rich nor the noble, nor the 
friend nor the relation of a curaca [or petty 
chief], nor even the Minister or Governor him- 
self, received any preference/' 1 Those who were 
too negligent or idle to take their turn and irri- 
1 Garcilasso, u Royal Commentaries of the Incas." 




PRE-INCA POTTERY FROM TOMB IN CHICAMA VALLEY, COAST OF PERU. 



To face p. 198. 



A PREHISTORIC SOCIALISM 199 



gate their land within the given time were 
punished. 

The Inca hydraulic works included the build- 
ing of dams for water-storage ; and by works 
of this character they increased the capacity, in 
some cases, of the lakes which generally form 
the source of Peruvian coast rivers. They en- 
larged these lakes and led aqueducts therefrom. 
Works of the character which I have examined 
in the remote interior are of much interest. In 
some cases ravines were spanned by means of 
aqueducts, some of which are used by the natives 
to-day ; and in the province of Nasca water 
for irrigation was conducted by subterranean 
channels. 

The Incas were expert irrigationists, and their 
old channels and hydraulic works remain in many 
parts of Peru. Some of the canals formed for 
this purpose were many miles in length. 

" The Inca emperors caused irrigation channels 
to be constructed, which were most admirable, as 
may be seen to this day," Garcilasso wrote at the 
end of the sixteenth century. " The engineers 
led the irrigation channels in directions required 
to be watered, and they endeavoured to increase 
its fertility as much as possible. The Incas sup- 
plied the water with much ingenuity, and no 
maize crop was sown without being also supplied 
with water. They also constructed channels to 
irrigate the pasture -lands when the autumn 
withheld its rains, for they took care to fertilise 
the pastures as well as the arable land, as they 
possessed immense flocks. These channels were 



200 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



destroyed as soon as the Spaniards came into 
the country, but the ruins may be seen to this 
day. In many places they led an irrigation 
channel for fifteen or twenty leagues to irrigate 
only a few fanegas of maize -land, that it might 
not be lost." 

The fanega is equal to about one and one- 
tenth acre. The flocks, of course, were of 
llamas and alpacas. 

I have spoken elsewhere of the remarkable 
system of terracing the mountain slopes to form 
agricultual land — the andenes, as these terraces 
were termed by the Spaniards ; and it was partly 
to irrigate these hanging fields that the irrigation 
canals were formed. Many of the andenes be- 
longed to the Inca and to the sun, because the 
emperors had ordered their construction. Lands 
not capable of irrigation were nevertheless made 
to yield good products, such as potatoes and 
other edible roots, whilst the qiiinua, a valu- 
able cereal of the Andean regions to-day 
(Chenopodium quinoa), a seed something like 
rice, was planted with the maize often in the 
colder lands. In barren coast lands fish was 
used as a fertiliser, grains of maize being planted 
in holes with dead fishes. 

If the methods of land tenure and its fertilising 
were beneficent and reasonable, no less were 
those connected with cultivation and harvest. 

" They also established 1 a regular order in the 
tilling and cultivating of the land. They first 
tilled the fields of the sun ; then those of the 
1 Garcilasso, ante. 



A PREHISTORIC SOCIALISM 201 



widows, orphans, aged, and sick, for all these 
persons were classed as poor, and, as such, the 
Yuca emperor ordered that their fields should 
be tilled for them. In each village, or in each 
ward if the village was large, there were men 
deputed to look after the lands of persons who 
were classed as poor. These ' officers of the 
village ' superintended the ploughing, sowing, and 
harvesting ; and at such times they went up into 
towers the night before, built for the purpose, 
and, after blowing through a trumpet or shell 
to secure attention, cried with a loud voice that 
on such a day such and such lands of the poor 
would be tilled, warning those whose duty it 
might be to repair thither. If the poor had 
no seed it was provided from the Government 
stores. The lands of soldiers who were em- 
ployed in the wars were also tilled in this way, 
like those of widows and orphans, for wives 
whose husbands were serving in the wars were 
looked upon as widows during their absence." 1 
After the lands of the poor and incapacitated 
had been attended to, the people cultivated their 
own holdings and rendered mutual assistance to 
each other ; and the last to receive such was 
the curaca. Was there any favouritism or 
corruption shown in these operations, or 
I "graft" set up? "In the time of the 
Emperor Huayna Capac a superintendent in 
the province of Chachapoyas was hanged, be- 

1 A useful hint for Britain, whose soldiers' families often 
are left in want, and whose old soldiers at times perish in 
destitution ! 



202 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



cause he caused the land of a curaca, who was 
a relation of his, to be tilled before that of a 
poor widow." 1 

" The Inca emperors ordered that the lands 
of their subjects should take precedence of their 
own, because they said that from the prosperity 
of their subjects was derived their faithful service, 
for if they were poor and in need they would not 
be able to serve well either in peace or war." 2 

The last lands to be cultivated were those 
belonging to the Sun, and the tilling of these 
was made the opportunity for festival and re- 
joicing, singing and general contentment. All 
the songs that were sung in praise of the Sun 
and the emperor were composed with reference 
to the meaning of the word Haylli, which, in the 
general language of Peru, meant " triumph." 
Thus they were said to triumph over the earth 
by ploughing it, so that it might yield fruit. 
The refrain of each couplet was the word Haylli, 
repeated as often as was necessary, and this 
seems to have been a species of " Hallelujah." 

Among the most remarkable laws of the Incas 
were those concerning taxation. The principal 
feature of these laws was that taxes were not 
paid in money, but in work and in produce, 
whether manufactured or grown. It was held 
by the Inca emperors as unjust that taxes should 
be demanded in any form or commodity which 

1 Garcilasso, ante. There might be salutary lessons for the 
thriving American institution known as u Tammany n in these 
matters. 

2 Garcilasso, ante. A hint for British statesmen ! 



A PREHISTORIC SOCIALISM 203 

the people of any particular place could not pro- 
duce by their own personal labour. 1 

" The principal tribute was to sow the lands, 
reap the crops of the Sun and the emperor, and 
to store them in the granaries, which were kept 
in each village. These granaries were con- 
structed with great care. The crops of the Sun 
and those of the emperor were shut up in places 
apart. Throughout the empire there were three 
kinds of storehouses in which crops and other 
tribute were shut up. In each village, whether 
it was large or small, there were two storehouses. 
In one was deposited the provision which was 
stored up for the people, to guard against famine 
in years of scarcity, and in the other the crops 
of the emperor and the Sun." 2 

These royal and religious deposits, however, 
were not squandered or monopolised, but were 
held in reserve also, against time of need, and 
seed for sowing was provided therefrom. 

A noteworthy system concerning the payment 
of taxes in the product of the labour of the 
individual was in vogue. 

" The people also paid another sort of tribute, 
which was to make clothes, shoes, and arms for 
the soldiers and the poor who could not work 
themselves owing to age or infirmity. In dis- 
( tributing and ordering this second tribute, the 
same rules were observed as in all other similar 
matters. The cloth in all parts of the Sierra 

I 

1 Food for thought for our overtaxed classes to-day ! 

2 Garcilasso, ante. A useful hint for Great Britain, as 
against starvation in war-time ! 



204 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



was made of wool from the innumerable flocks. 
On the plains of the sea-coast, where the climate 
is warm and they do not dress in woollens, they 
made cotton cloths, the cotton being provided 
from the crops of the emperor and the Sun. 
The shoes were made in the provinces where 
aloes were most abundant, for they were made 
of the leaves of a tree called maguey. The arms 
also were supplied by the provinces where the 
materials for making them were most abundant. 
In some they made bows and arrows, in others 
lances and darts, in others clubs and axes, slings 
and shields. In fine, each province furnished 
its own produce, without seeking in any strange 
land for what it did not yield itself, for no 
province had to supply anything that did not 
belong to it. Thus they paid their tribute with- 
out having to leave their homes." 1 

Amid this remarkable social system of the 
Incas was the beneficent mandate prohibiting 
beggary and destitution ; and this, of course, 
followed upon due provision in their laws. 
Every citizen was considered to be provided 
for, theoretically and practically. No man 
need be idle, no man need lack land, or seed, 
or implements wherewith to cultivate it and 
make a living for himself and family, there- 
fore no one was permitted to beg. If any 
were found doing so it was clear proof of 
idleness, not of lack of opportunity or physical 
incapacity, for, as shown, the incapable were pro- 
vided for ; and severe contempt and punishment 

1 Garcilasso, ante. Useful hints for the British taxpayer ! 



A PREHISTORIC SOCIALISM 205 



was meted out upon all tramps, vagabonds, and 
idlers." 

Whilst we must extol the social system of the 
Incas, in as far as it provided for all its people 
and precluded the barbarous conditions of in- 
sufficiency and unemployment out of which 
society in the twentieth century is striving to 
emancipate itself, we must recollect that it was 
not a progressive system. The Quechuas and 
Inca-ruled tribes could not advance. They were 
but children living under the will of benevo- 
lent autocrats. They could neither choose their 
occupation nor even marry of their own free will. 
Such a system could not have endured, and 
whether, supposing it had not been destroyed by 
the Spanish advent, it would have developed the 
spirit of individualism of European nations, whilst 
retaining its valuable practices of community- 
rights, it is impossible to say. It has been rather 
unjustly urged against the Inca regime that it 
fell easily before a handful of invaders, and this 
has been used as an argument against 
" socialism." But it is to be recollected that 
its fall was largely due to the kingdom having 
been divided against itself at that period, and 
also the sudden effect of the horses and guns of 
the Spaniards upon a people who had never seen 
such before must be considered. 

It is not to be supposed that the benefits of 
the Inca rule have been revived under the so- 
called republic of modern Peru. The Spaniards 
stamped out these splendid native laws of the 
aboriginal people, and the Peruvians of to-day 



206 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



are largely the creatures of a somewhat feeble 
copy of European manners, in which land 
monopoly, and negligence and oppression of the 
poor Indian are among their worst defects. In 
Peru, as in all other Spanish-American com- 
munities, every petty official is more or less of 
a tyrant over the aboriginal race, who are 
deprived of their rights. 

As to the land, it is held in great part after 
the unrighteous fashion of Europe, mainly by 
large land monopolists, except where it is too 
remote or inaccessible, as in the jungles or 
mountain region. Only there the Inca system 
has been to some extent preserved, and the 
native small-holding is inalienable by law. Of 
course, Peru is one of those countries with 
enormous areas of wild territory, much of it 
extremely valuable, and any citizen (or alien) 
may acquire a holding therein from the State. 



CHAPTER XII 



COMPARISONS AND CONTRADICTIONS 

From Asia to America ? — No iron or vehicles — Stone tools in 
early American arts — Remarkable stone-shaping methods 
— Indefatigable architects — Massive work — General 
characteristics — Moving the monoliths — Work on the 
high plateaux — Engineering knowledge in prehistoric 
America — The Pueblo ruins — Early explorers — Age of 
the Mexican and Peruvian ruins — No origin from Asia ? 
— Cord-holders in masonry — Native gallows — Similarity 
of ground plans — Peru and Mexico compared — Columns 
in early architecture — The potter's wheel non-existent — 
Beautiful textile work — Native dyes — Killing home 
industries — Prehistoric metallurgy ■ — Jewel-craft — Ore- 
smelting at Potosi — Admirable goldsmith's work — Abun- 
dance of gold — Spurious antiquities — Methods of his- 
torical record — Hieroglyphs and the quipos — Analogies 
with China, Tibet, and Tahiti. 

If it be true that the germs of civilisation and 
the arts were brought into America from Asia, 
it is certainly remarkable that such pre -historic 
immigration should have left behind some of the 
prime adjuncts of man's life and handicraft. 
The early Americans, as far as known at 
present, used no iron tools, notwithstanding 
that iron abounds in America ; they had no 
wheat, they used no wheeled vehicles, nor, 
indeed, employed the wheel in any form, 
except in one instance as a spindle in weaving, 

207 



208 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



— although, of course, the absence of any beast 
of draught or burden — horse, ass, ox— would have 
rendered vehicles useless. Moreover, clever 
builders as they were, they did not know of the 
arch — that indispensable feature of scientific 
building. 

Stone was quarried by the constructive people 
of early America by means of crowbars and 
picks of wood and bone. The silicious rocks 
were split with stone hammers, and broken and 
chipped into shape with bone tools. In the case 
of finished and polished stonework the material 
was chipped by blows, and ground smooth with 
other stones, and polished with fine material. 
Stones were sawed by the agency of sand or 
with a thin piece of harder stone, and boring 
or drilling was effected with the sand-drill. 
Even the hardest rocks were undoubtedly pierced 
with specially hard sand, and the patience 
expended on these operations is evident, and we 
see that stones were sawed, shaped, polished, 
carved, and perforated in any desired form. 
For building purposes stones were got out from 
the quarries, dressed, carved, and sculptured with 
stone hammers and chisels made of hard and 
tenacious rock. These implements are found still 
in the debris of quarries. Stone-cutter's tools of 
metal, as far as is known, did not exist, though, 
without them could they produce the results 
attained? Even mining was done apparently 
without, and I have recovered stone hammers 
and deer's horns from abandoned mines where 
they had been used in excavation. 



COMPARISONS — CONTRADICTIONS 209 



We shall be forced to reflect upon the vast 
amount of time and patience which the early 
American of Mexico, Central America, and Peru 
must have employed in their stone -working. 
Companion stones in walls are not cubes in the 
Inca buildings, but of slightly polygonal form, 
involving the added labour of fitting to their 
fellows in the wall, as before described. More- 




0273 OP THE LOOBWAYS TO THE INCA PALACE. 
INCA RUINS OF HUANUCO VIEJO. 

(Measurements in Metres.) 

over, they are of a size generally such as must 
have taken several men to handle, and must 
have been fitted by constant placing and re- 
placing. The fine surfaces of the stones in the 
walls of such buildings as Huanuco Viejo, and 
others which I examined, might have been made 
with the most modern of tools. 

Extreme massiveness marks the stone con- 

14 



210 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



struction of early Mexican and Peruvian build- 
ings, especially in the Andine region, and the 
walls occupied a space out of all proportion to 
the rooms. " At Uxmal in Yucatan it is about 
forty to one." Of course their builders, or at least 
in Peru, took into account the frequent and severe 
earthquake shocks, and to their credit it is that 
earthquakes innumerable throughout the cen- 
turies have not destroyed their erections. The 
same cannot be said for modern buildings in 
Spanish -America, although the edifices of the 
colonial Spanish period are extremely strong and 
durable. The modern builder in America takes 
no account of earthquakes ; the ancient was far 
wiser. Shocks are of constant occurrence in the 
regions facing upon the Pacific, and during a 
stay of several months in one part of the South 
American Cordillera, slightly to the south of the 
Titicaca region, I recorded shocks on an average 
of two a week, some of them sufficient to have 
cracked ordinary buildings. In the region occu- 
pied by the Inca Empire buildings are rarely, 
of more than one story, and no doubt this was 
connected with danger from earthquakes. 

The best remaining example of the stone- 
building art of the early American race is gener- 
ally considered to be the Maya architectural 
structures ; and the palace at Uxmal and the 
Castillo at Chichen Itza, which have been 
described, indicate a mastery in architectural 
design on the part of their builders. Neverthe- 
less, they have faults. There is a lack of unity 
in the plan and grouping, and an enorxnous dis- 




RUINS OF MITLA, SOUTHERN MEXICO. 



To face p. 210. 



COMPARISONS — CONTRADICTIONS 211 



proportion between the available space and the 
material of the walls which enclose it. In Peru 
perhaps one of the most praiseworthy examples 
of the stonemason's art is the Temple of the Sun 
at Cuzco, with the circular form of its walls, 
which curve inward and upward and are most 
imposing. This part of the temple still remains. 

It is to be recollected that the architectural 
Mexicans, Central Americans, and especially the 
Peruvians, had no derricks or other apparatus 
for hoisting . Probably they rolled the great stones 
into place along prepared ways and up inclined 
planes of earth, which were afterwards removed. 
In building the famous fortress of Sacsaihuaman 
at Cuzco, considerable heights had to be 
ascended, and at Tiahuanaco stones weighing, it 
is stated, four hundred tons were carried seven- 
teen miles. In the fortress of Ollantaytambo 
large stones were hauled up a great ascent and 
were fitted perfectly. The moving of such great 
objects by such simple processes shows what could 
be done by great numbers of men enlisted in a 
single effort, and how high an organisation it 
must have been which could hold them together 
and feed them. In this connection it is to be 
recollected that on the Peruvian uplands, where 
these great ruins exist, timber does not grow 
—there is not a tree of any dimensions within 
vast distances— nor will maize ripen there. On 
my journeys in those regions the feeding problem 
often was acute. 1 What must it have been for 

1 See my book "The Andes and the Amazon'' (fourth 
edition). 



212 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



the huge armies of workmen who, over long 
periods, must have been engaged in building 
these great structures ? 

In engineering science the early American had 
considerable hydraulic knowledge, as borne out 
by the reservoirs and aqueducts of Arizona, 
Mexico, and Peru, which show that hydrotechny 
was understood. Frequent reference has been 
made in these pages to these hydraulic works. 
Terrace-building and culture were practised on 
the Pacific slope in many points, from Arizona 
to Mexico and Peru, as already described. The 
capabilities of the early American builders have 
been fully recognised. " As cultivators and 
engineers the early Peruvians excelled their 
European conquerors," a recent authority 1 says. 

The age of these early American buildings 
has already been discussed, but the views of a 
well-known Americanist 2 should have a place 
here. " When we turn to the monumental data, 
to the architectural and structural relics of the 
ancient Americans, we naturally think first of 
the imposing stone-built fortresses of Peru, the 
massive pyramids and temples of Yucatan and 
Mexico, and the vast brick piles of the Pueblo. 
It is doubtful if any of these notable monuments 
supply pre-historic dates of excessive antiquity. 
The pueblos, both those now occupied and the 
vastly greater number whose ruins lie scattered 
over the valleys and mesas of new Mexico, were 
constructed by the ancestors of the tribes who 

1 Encyc. Brit., " Peru." 

2 Brinton, " Essays of an Americanist," Philadelphia, 1890. 



COMPARISONS — CONTRADICTIONS 213 



still inhabit that region, and this at no distant 
day within the period and the commencement 
of our era. There is every reason to suppose 
that the same is true of all the stone and brick 
edifices of Mexico and Central America. The 
majority of them were occupied at the period 
of the Conquest, others were in process of 
building, and of others the record of the date 
of their construction was clearly in memory and 
not distant." 

In common with some other writers, this 
author questions the very remote antiquity of 
these buildings, these once famous cities, which 
have fallen to ruin and are sunk into oblivion 
in the midst of dense tropical forests, such as 
that of Palenque and others in Yucatan, and takes 
issue with the earliest explorers, including the 
Friar Lorenzo de Bienvenida, who wrote about 
then from Yucatan to Carlos V. in 1548— and 
who even then had found lofty stone pyramids, 
mounds, and temples covered with a forest 
growth as old as the forest around them. Of 
course, as already discussed, the opinion of most 
competent observers is that these structures date 
from some five centuries before the Spanish 
advent, but that they were preceded by earlier 
cultures. 

As to the ancient Peruvian structures, 
especially that of Tiahuanako, the same writer 
considers that even the oldest of these are " not 
older than the mediaeval period of European 
history " ; whilst another writer, of Spanish 
origin, says, on the contrary, that " even the 



214 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



memory of their builders was lost thousands of 
years before the discovery of America " 1 
— opinions which, therefore, differ widely. As 
regards these latter structures, more study has 
been given to them since those writers discussed 
them, and as has been shown, the ruins of the 
Andine peoples are resolvable into more than 
one epoch, the age of some being measured only 
by centuries, the others possibly by thousands 
of years, whilst the Mexican structures are also 
of varying epochs. Further, it is perhaps not 
unnatural for an American writer to seek to 
establish an autochthonous origin for the early 
civilisations of America. Even to the scientific 
mind some sense of patriotic pride might, almost 
unconsciously, tinge opinion. He adds : " In- 
deed, summing up the reply to an inquiry which 
has often been addressed as to the industrial 
evolution of the indigenes of our continent, I 
should say that they did not borrow a single art 
or invention, nor a single cultivated plant from 
any part of the Old World previous to the arrival 
of Columbus. What they had was their own, 
developed from their own soil, the outgrowth of 
their own lives and needs." There is, however, 
the same spirit displayed here as that commented 
upon before, in which it seems that some 
American students do not wish to acknowledge 
the " open door " to an outside influence, which 
more far-seeing writers have maintained. 2 

An important part of the problem concerning 

1 " General Bartolome Mitre," 1879, Buenos Ayres. 

2 See p. 37. 



COMPARISONS — CONTRADICTIONS 215 



the early American cultures is of course that 
of establishing the relationship between North 
and South America — that is, between the art of 
the Mexicans and the Peruvians — and much work 
upon this point remains to be done. 

There is no record of any communication 
between Mexico and Peru in pre-historic times. 
There was probably none by sea, whatever the 
land communication may have been. Neither 
Aztecs nor Incas were navigators ; they had no 
use for the sea except for fishing. It is true 
that the early Peruvians built large balsas, or 
rafts with sails, and it was a craft of this nature 
that Pizarro and his men encountered off the 
coast on their voyage, and from whose crew they 
first learned of the Inca Empire. Also the 
fishermen of the Chilean coast were extremely 
dexterous with their catamarans of inflated seal- 
skins, upon which they darted over the rollers. 
Even to-day the Chilean boatmen are the most 
expert on the coast, but it is to be recollected 
that the early Chileans did not belong to the 
Inca Empire ; on the contrary, the Arucanians, 
the hardy fighters of Chile, opposed the Inca 
advance to the south. But nothing in the form 
of a sea-going vessel had been evolved all along 
this ten thousand miles of coast, beyond these 
primitive canoes, from the Eskimos to Pata- 
gonia, as far as is known. 

What communication there was must have been 
by land, and of course the famous Inca roads 
covered more than a thousand miles, and might 
conceivably have occasioned some contact be- 



216 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



tween the Inca and Maya-Aztec influences, as 
mentioned elsewhere. 

Whilst there are wide differences in early- 
Peruvian and Mexican structures, there is analogy 
on some points, and as regards matters of 
decorative art and social customs in some cases 
there is exact similarity between them. Some 
points worthy of note have been touched upon, 
such as the long galleries — on plan— of the Mayas 
and the Incas, whilst the community-houses of 
the Cliff Dwellers and Pueblos seem reminiscent 
of those of Huanuco Vie jo and others in (Peru. 
As to the round towers and square towers of the 
Pueblo region of Arizona, &c, they appear to 
be similar to those of the Peruvian highlands. 
But in Peru we never or rarely find the riotous 
and beautiful sculpture of the Mayas of Central 
America, except that the pre-Inca monoliths are 
carved ; nor in Central America and Mexico do 
we observe the same character of polygonal- 
shaped wall stones, such as are so marked a 
feature of Inca walls. Furthermore, we do not 
encounter the pyramid-temple in Peru. The use 
of round stone columns occurs in both archi- 
tectural regions ; such as the monolithic columns 
of Mitla and the serpent columns of Central 
America, whilst in Peru the sole example 
apparently is that of Incahuassi, on the coast. 
These last, however, are not monoliths. 

A minor detail occurring in stonework in both 
continents, to which I am not aware that attention 
has been drawn before, is that of cord-holes in 
masonry, here illustrated. Fig. i shows a 



218 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



kind of " dumb sheave " from Palenque in 
Chiapas, usually found on the inside of doorways 
a foot or two back from the jamb, and distributed 
in rows from lintel level to floor. 1 Fig. 2 is 
from the back of a serpent -column at Chichen 
Itza in Yucatan, 2 and in Fig. 3 the same kind of 
cord-holder occurs in corners and mouldings .3 
Fig. 4 is a similar device from Copan in Hon- 
duras^ whilst Fig. 5 is from Huanuco Vie jo in 
Peru. 5 

Whilst these holes were undoubtedly in all 
cases for the same purpose, that of cord-holders 
for curtains — and the similarity between those of 
Central America and Peru, more than 2,500 miles 
apart, is striking — there is a legend to the effect 
that the holes at Huanuco Viejo served the pur- 
pose of gallows. The natives of the region 
informed me that in the time of the Incas a 
cord was passed through the hole and round the 
neck of the person to be executed, one side being 
for men, the other for women offenders, and 
that a loose stone block upon which they were 
caused to stand being removed, they remained 
suspended and were strangled. 

As regards ceramic art, similarity in some 
points of design between Mexico and Peru, and 
even Arizona, exists : the same wedge patterns, 
wave patterns, " Greek " patterns, &c, constantly 
occurring between these various regions of 

1 "Ancient Cities of Mexico," Holmes. 2 Ibid. 

3 Ibid. 4 « Biologia Centralia Americana," Maudslay. 
5 My own sketches in Peru ; see " The Andes and the 
Amazon." 



COMPARISONS 



— CONTRADICTIONS 219 



Mexico and Peru. 1 But there was no potter's 
wheel in the Western world, although it was 
almost invented. Patience, time and muscle, 
knack and touch, a trained eye and expert brain, 
and patterns fashioned from memory, or anew, 
or possibly inheritances of former art, aided by 
a box of dry sand, were able to give the charming 
results which they attained. The pottery of the 
Incas and pre-Incas especially shows the power 
of care and devoted craftsmanship. Nothing can 
exceed the beauty and originality, in their special 
fields, of the examples of earthen vessels dug 
up from the Peruvian huacas, illustrations of 
some of which are given in this book. Soap- 
stone, when used as it was for pottery, was 
partly cut into the desired shape in the native 
ledge, broken or prised loose and afterwards 
scraped into form ; and paint was excavated from 
mines and deposits, and rubbed fine on stones 
with water and grease. 

Both among the early Mexicans and Peruvians 
wall-painting was an art. Some of the walls 
I examined in Peru were coloured with ver- 
milion, doubtless from the cinnabar or quick- 
silver deposits which occur in that country. The 
women of the Incas, it is recorded, used ver- 
milion to paint their faces on certain occasions. 

As regards art in weaving in early America, 
Indian textile work was done entirely by hand ; 
the only devices known were the bark peeler 
and beater, the shredder, the flint knife, the 
spindle, the rope twister, the bodkin, the warp 

* See p. 245. 



220 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



beam, and the most primitive harness. Beautiful 
and soft dye-colours were attained. The textile 
arts were employed in clothing, furniture, 
utensils, and a hundred ways — dom'estic, social, 
and religious. On the Pacific coast of America 
basketry in every form of technique was known. 
In Northern Mexico network, rude lacework 
in twine, was improved upon by the people 
farther south, where finer materials were avail- 
able. By " figured weaving of most intricate 
type and pattern, warps were crossed and 
wrapped, wefts were omitted and texture 
changed, so as to produce marvellous effects 
upon the surface. This composite art reached 
its climax in Peru, the llama wool affording the 
finest staple on the whole hemisphere." 1 The 
making of the " Panama " hat was and is a 
famous industry, carried out in exceptional con- 
ditions. The woven poncho was a universal 
native garment which the Spaniards adopted, and 
it is similar in form both in Mexico and Peru. 

Indeed, it would be difficult to exceed the 
beauty and utility of the textile fabrics and 
weaving of the early Peruvians, which to some 
extent prevail still, and we are again caused to 
reflect upon the great care, ingenuity, and 
patience which the Indian displays in his handi- 
crafts, which in some instances are in marked 
contrast with the machine-made goods of modern 
commerce. There is a note of sadness in the 
passing of the home crafts and industries of a 
primitive people, or, indeed, of any people. The 

1 Encyc. Brit., " America." 



COMPARISONS — CONTRADICTIONS 221 



Quechuas and Aymaras of the Andine uplands 
still grow their wool and weave their own gar- 
ments, but they are beginning to prefer the 
gaudy colours of the aniline dyes of German 
manufacture rather than the soft shades their 
forefathers made at home, and doubtless the time 
is at hand when the excellent and durable 
" tweeds " and homespuns which they make for 
poncho or skirt will be replaced by cheap 
material imported from abroad by the efforts of 
industrious bagmen and " drummers," a thin 
stream of whom is already percolating into the 
Peruvian and Bolivian interior, and who in due 
time will perform for the Cholo of the Andes the 
same " service " that Lancashire has performed 
for India, of vulgarising or ruining the old handi- 
craft of the natives. The same thing may be 
said for Mexico and Spanish America generally. 
One striking instance is the substitution of the 
picturesque olla or earthen vessel for water- 
carrying by the women of Mexico by the empty 
petroleum-can of the foreign oil trusts ! 

As before remarked, the mechanical powers of 
the early Americans were handicapped by their 
lack of knowledge of the use of iron, and, indeed, 
it has been asked, if their culture came from 
Asia, how was it they had no knowledge of this ? 
Primitive metallurgy was practised in Mexico, 
Columbia, and Peru, but no evidence of smelt- 
ing ores with fluxes is offered, although casting 
from metal melted in open fires is assumed. 
Gold, silver, copper, pure or mixed with tin or 
silver, are to be found in both continents. Metals 



222 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



were cold-hammered into plates, or sometimes 
treated as malleable stones, and soldering, 
brazing, and the blow -pipe in the Cordillera 
provinces are suspected, but their use requires 
further evidence. Ores, however, were smelted 
by the aid of natural draught, as mentioned later. 
At Chiriqui, in Panama, there were remarkable 
products of ancient metallurgy, which tax the 
imagination as to the process involved, especi- 
ally as these ancient metal-workers disguised 
their methods at times. The fact remains, how- 
ever, " that the curious metal-craft of the narrow 
strip along the Pacific from Mexico to Titicaca 
is the greatest of archaeological enigmas." 
Metal -working appliances must have been of the 
rudest kind, and if moulds for casting were used, 
they must have been destroyed, for no museum 
contains samples of them, and the processes are 
not discoverable. To the work of these cunning 
pre -historic artificers a great deal of study has 
been devoted, surprising productions of whose 
handiwork have been recovered in the art pro- 
vinces of Mexico and the Cordilleras, especially 
Chiriqui. It is the case, however, that both the 
tools and the methods have escaped the investi- 
gations of the archaeologist, as they did the ablest 
goldsmiths in Spain, " for," as Herrera said, 
" they never could conceive how they had been 
made, there being no sign of a hammer or any 
engraver or any other instrument used by them, 
the Indians having none such." 

Indeed, the traveller to-day, especially in Peru, 
will regard with much interest and speculation 



COMPARISONS — CONTRADICTIONS 223 



the objects of copper and gold which have been 
and often still are recovered from the huacas 
or burial-places. The small, heavy images of 
copper which one may examine in Peru could 
scarcely have been made except by casting in 
a mould. Beautiful and intricate vessels and 
ornaments of gold were a feature of Inca 
art. In Western Mexico I observed the native 
art of beating out large copper vessels as 
much as three or more feet in diameter, and 
dealings in copper matte, a crude smelted 
ore, are practised as " home industries " on the 
Pacific slope at Mexico, and this, whilst it may 
have borrowed something from modern methods, 
must have had some foundation in pre-Columbian 
art. 

In connection with early metallurgy on the 
Pacific coast, and what has been said concerning 
smelting, it is to be recollected that at Potosi 
— now part of Bolivia— the Indians not only 
smelted the argentiferous galena, or silver-lead 
ores, which abound there, and made Potosi a 
by-word for mining wealth, but actually showed 
the Spaniards, in early days, how they used the 
natural force of the wind for smelting. " They 
built little adobe furnaces, called guayras, and 
deposited therein the ore, sufficiently wetted and 
incorporated with others that facilitated their 
smelting and filled them up with fuel, when the 
whole began to burn by means of the natural 
blowing of the wind, which gave a better result 
than the artificial draught of a bellows such as 
the Spaniards used. This method of smelting 



224 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



was continued at night, and upon the heights of 
Potosi the lights of more than fifteen thousand 
little furnaces were seen." The word guayra is 
Quechua for wind. 

The above account is from an early Spanish 
chronicler: Pinelo. Indeed, the skill of the artifi- 
cers of ancient Peru in the precious metals is 
well known. "The metal was smelted in small 
furnaces, the fires of which were blown by means 
of small pipes, at one end of which the air 
emerged through a small hole ; it was then 
emptied into moulds and spread out in thin 
streaks imitating the filaments of maize or small 
flowers, the soldering being performed without 
leaving the slightest traces of the junctures . With 
gold, silver, and copper plates they adorned the 
effigies of men and pottery of all kinds, which 
have caused the admiration of all who have seen 
them. Cloths of vicuna wool, which were inter- 
woven with gold and silver filaments, have come 
down to us to-day in all their primitive freshness. 
Among other wonders of Inca industry, admira- 
tion is evoked by the mysterious manner in which, 
by merit of skill and constancy, they burnished 
emeralds, amethysts, and other stones of equal 
hardness." 1 This weaving with gold threads is 
suggestive of early Syrian or Arabic work — an 
art which passed in remote times from Babylon 
to other cities, and which is first mentioned as 
employed in the ephod of Aaron. 2 

1 " El Peru en 1906," Lima. 

2 Exod. xxxix. See Encyc. Brit, 14 Gold and Silver 
Thread." 



COMPARISONS — CONTRADICTIONS 225 



The Spanish accounts of the goldsmith's art 
of the Incas is very full, and the objects of 
art in gold which the traveller may observe 
which exist to-day in Peru will remove any sus- 
picion that those accounts are fables, although 
they may have been overdrawn at times. It 
is to be recollected that the Incas set little store 
by the value of gold, which they did not use as 
currency, but simply for purposes of decoration, 
and the profuse images of gold — men, animals, 
trees, fruits — at the temple of Cuzco, before the 
Conquest, and, indeed, during it, are one of the 
wonders in the history of the yellow metal. 

The products and remains of indigenous 
industries must be divided carefully into several 
classes, as pre-Hispanic, Hispanic or Colum- 
bian, those of the present time, and those 
which are spurious. Now that travel and 
interest are slowly gathering way in these 
remote regions, it is common to find the begin- 
nings of a trade in spurious antiquities. An old 
Indian woman used to pester me frequently to 
purchase copper idols and images " dug up from 
tombs," which, it was easy to see, were of recent 
manufacture. However, they were at least 
moulded from some genuine antique, and, indeed, 
the genuine articles and huacos from the tombs 
are so plentiful in Peru — especially the beautiful 
pottery — that imitation is scarcely likely to be 
a thriving business yet. 

As regards the historical records of the early 
Americans, no help is forthcoming from any 
decipherment of these concerning any supposed 

15 



226 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



Asiatic connection or contact, or at any rate so 
far.; The Mayan hieroglyphics and papyri have 
been fairly well studied, but much remains 
to be done. The Incas did not preserve 
records in this way, but it is considered 
that the preceding people did. " There can be 
no, doubt that the pre-Inca people made use of 
hieroglyphics, but the system fell into disuse 
during the most enlightened epoch of the Incas, 
and as the art of deciphering them is, up to the 
present time, unknown, we are still ignorant of 
what they might reveal. According to a Spanish 
chronicler 1 it was forbidden by the Incas to 
preserve writings, for they were looked upon as 
the cause of evils and disease." 

The records of the Incas were the remark- 
able quipos, as before described, which replaced 
the earlier hieroglyphs. These were bunches 
of cords of wool, knotted and coloured, 
every knot and colour of which told some tale, 
and this practically constituted the Inca writing. 
Historical records and accounts were kept by 
this method, and the special custodians of the 
qulpos, the librarians or historians, were expert 
in their use, and could give a minute and detailed 
account of what had happened thereby. It is 
interesting to note that an analogous system was 
used by the Chinese, Thibetans, and certain 
people of Oceania, and it is worthy of obser- 
vance " that the island of Tahiti retains the 
Quechua or Inca name that is still in use, 
since the inhabitants are called ' Tipona,' a word 

1 Montesinos. 



COMPARISONS — CONTRADICTIONS 227 



corresponding to ' Quipo/ but as the letter ' k ' 
does not exist in their language it is rendered 
as 't.'" 1 In Tibet this mnemonic system of 
writing by means of knotted cords was current 
even when writing was introduced in the seventh 
century. Of course this may be a universal in- 
vention. Even in England we tie a knot in 
our handkerchiefs in order to remember some- 
thing . 

There is much to be done in exploration and 
discovery among the Mexican and Peruvian 
culture areas. Especially interesting is the 
region of the Peruvian coast, the strip of semi- 
arid land fifty to eighty miles wide and fifteen 
hundred miles long, between the Andes and the 
Pacific . As has been shown, there are remains of 
very great antiquity here. From the district sur- 
rounding Trujillo in the north, down past Lima 
to Pisco, Nazca, and other places towards the 
south a careful exploration should reveal much. 
The Inca and the pre-Inca remains are readily 
determined. The huacas or tombs and sacred 
places are by no means all explored. 

The great advantage which photography now 
gives the archaeologist, in contrast with the neces- 
sarily faulty method of sketching of only a genera- 
tion ago, is very apparent in studying books upon 
these subjects, of last century. Illustrations in 
these are sometimes seen to bear only the 
remotest resemblance to the actual object, giving 
often an erroneous impression. This has not 
always been the fault of sketching, but of bad 

1 "El Peru en 1906," Lima. 



228 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



sketching, or of drawing on the imagination. So 
monumental a work, for example, as that of 
" Bancroft's Native Races of the Pacific of 
America "'is extremely poor in illustration, and 
these are often crude and inaccurate. Doubtless 
it was impossible to obtain accurate views. As 
an example the picture given in that work of 
the Inca ruins of Peru is misleading. With- 
out exact representation it is impossible to com- 
pare form and pattern belonging to one culture 
with those of another, and words alone cannot 
convey any sense of comparison. To see a thing, 
either actually or on paper, is the first demand 
of the student. 

We require a careful study of the patterns 
and designs upon the early Mexican and Peru- 
vian buildings, pottery, and textile fabrics, and 
a comparison with each other, so as to prove 
or strengthen the influence of early Mexico on 
early Peru, or vice versa ; and a careful com- 
parison of all these decorative patterns and 
symbols with those of the Old World, whether on 
Persian carpets, Egyptian costumes, or ancient 
pottery. Such comparisons have, of course, been 
made, but probably not by the best scientific 
faculty, and not in a sufficient range or abun- 
dantly enough. The illustrations given in this 
book are but a few specimens of the mass of 
available material. The florid ornament of Chan 
Chan on the Peruvian coast it may be of interest 
to compare with Oriental carpets and costumes, 
seeking a similarity in pattern, for example. 
1 London, 1875. 



COMPARISONS — CONTRADICTIONS 229 



There is something almost pathetic involved 
in a contemplation of the praiseworthy arts and 
civilisations of prehistoric America. They were 
cut off at a blow in the mere act of discovery, 
ravished wantonly and unnecessarily by six- 
teenth-century Europe, and they seem to have 
formed no link in the march of human progress 
which intelligent man bids himself to think is the 
destiny of the world. They were utterly swept 
aside, and became mere shells of ruins, scattered 
monoliths, and other fragments here and there, 
as if they were a reminder of the fleeting 
endeavours of man. The perished civilisations 
of Asia and Africa were at least links in a chain 
which reached in ever-growing importance to the 
world of to-day, but prehistoric America set no 
seal on time, influenced no act of posterity, added 
nothing to the plan of mankind, as far as can 
be seen. Yet we may reflect that the monuments 
of these ancient isolated American people have 
survived by virtue of their good qualities of 
solidity and conscientiousness in construction. 
At least we know that they were in the main the 
perpetuation in stone of a religious purpose, 
and we must concede to their industrious builders 
the lofty sentiment of a desire to create and 
bequeath something which should endure long 
after they themselves had passed away. 



CHAPTER XIII 



CONFLICTING TESTIMONIES 

Further evidence — Linguistic affinities — Analogies of signs 
and symbols, handicrafts and myths — Imported or 
indigenous ? — Mongolian affinities — The Eskimos — Great 
variety of habitat — Mixed Spanish blood — Resemblance 
of Mexicans and Peruvians to Japanese — The Chinaman 
at home in Peru — Language offers no proof — Chinese 
and Otomi — Possible prehistoric immigrations from Asia 
— Kubla Khan — Affirmative facts — Humboldt and the 
Mexican and Asiatic calendars — Babylonian-Greek 
imitation — Similarities in ornament — The " Greek " 
ornament universal — The " lost ten tribes " — The 
Swastika ; widespread occurrence— Oriental symbols — 
The cross in prehistoric America — The four ages of the 
world in Asia and Peru — Mesopotamia and Peruvian 
river craft — Rameses III. and Lake Titicaca. 

In physical and linguistic affinities, in analogies 
of signs, symbols, devices, the similarities of 
handicrafts, the comparisons of mythologies and 
cosmogonies, there is a vast amount of material 
which may be drawn upon, and which, indeed, 
has been drawn upon, by numerous writers who 
have sought to affirm the existence of the influ- 
ence of the Old World upon the New, and to 
establish a connection in early times between 
them. Indeed, it is impressed upon us that the 

230 



CONFLICTING TESTIMONIES 231 



question is one which will not acknowledge, at 
present, any finality. 

As regards the earliest suggested influence, 
perhaps the main contentions have centred 
around a Mongolian origin, and much con- 
troversy has been waged on this point. One of 
the principal American writers 1 in this field, 
before quoted, stoutly maintains the impossibility 
of any such affinity, and discussing the compari- 
son of types of skulls, skin, colour, &c, points 
to the fact that " the Mongols are the roundest- 
headed of people, and the Americans in nearest 
contact therewith — that is, the Eskimos are a 
long-headed people — and expresses surprise that 
Virchow should have repeated that the Eskimos 
are of Mongolian descent. " If colour, hair, and 
crania are thus shown to present such feeble 
similarities, what is it that has given rise to a 
notion of the Mongoloid origin of the American 
Indians? Is it the so-called Mongolian eye, the 
oblique eye, with a seeming droop at its inner 
canthus? Yes, a good deal has been made of 
this by certain writers." 

The writers named below 2 instanced certain 
tribes of American Indians, such as the 
Eskimo, the tribes of the North Pacific Coast, 
and a tribe of the Brazils, which they assert show 
marked Chinese traits, and have argued for a 
Mongoloid character. Indeed, the relation of 
Eskimo and Mongol has been discussed very 

1 Brinton, ante. 

2 Ave-Lallemant, St. Hilaire, Peschal, and Virchow, also 
Cuvier. 



232 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



freely. A recent authority before quoted con- 
siders that while the American aborigines north 
of Mexico may, as to their general constitution, 
be considered as one " American race " whose 
nearest congener is to be found in the " Mon- 
golian race " of eastern Asia, &c, there is a 
wide range in variation among them with 
respect to special physical characteristics. Some 
authorities 1 separate the Eskimo from the 
Indians, and regard them as a distinct sub-race 
of the Mongolo Malay. This, however, in the 
view of this authority is hardly necessary if the 
view of other students is adopted, that the in- 
habitants of North-eastern Asia and America are 
a unit divided into a great many distinct types, 
but belonging to one and the same of the four 
large divisions of mankind, in which sub-divisions 
of humanity, based on the hair, the Americans 
are straight -haired or Mongoloid. 2 

It is further argued that environment is 
responsible for the changes or variations in the 
Americans. " Occupying 135 0 of latitude, living 
on the shores of frozen or tropical waters, at 
altitudes varying from sea level to several thou- 
sands of feet ; in forests, grassy prairies, or 
deserts ; here starved, there in plenty ; with a 
night here of six months' duration, there twelve 
hours long, here among health-giving winds and 
there cursed with malaria — this brown man be- 
came, in different culture provinces, brunette or 

1 Like Dr. Hrdlicka, " Handbook of American Indians 
North of Mexico," before quoted. 

2 Encyc. Brit., " North American Indians." 



CONFLICTING TESTIMONIES 233 



black, tall or short, long-headed or short -headed, 
and developed on his own hemisphere variations 
from one average type." 1 This question of the 
Mongolo -Malay Eskimos does not, of course, 
preclude the hypothesis of various migrant waves 
of humanity from Asia at various times. But 
the concensus of opinion that the Eskimos are of 
Mongol origin is exceedingly strong. 

Most writers agree that the natives of North 
and South America are substantially the same 
in race characteristics. Indeed, the traveller who 
has had occasion to observe the Mexican and 
Peruvian natives will be impressed with their 
similarity. This similarity is preserved by the 
Mestizo — that is, the Spanish-American, with both 
Spanish and native blood in his veins. In this 
connection it is, of course, to be recollected that 
the Spaniard himself embodies a great mixture 
of races, and in Mexico he brought in Iberian, 
Roman, Celtic, Semite, Vandal, Goth, and 
Moorish blood and mingled it with the native 
stock. 

Apart from the more scientific arguments as 
to the Mongolian connection, both those last 
cited and those given in previous chapters, there 
are to be considered what might be called 
" popular " beliefs and reasonings which are ex- 
tremely hard to argue away or destroy. Thus it 
is that a Mongolian resemblance or affinity in 
many instances is apparent to the observant 
traveller, both as to Mexico and Peru, to say 
nothing of the indigenes of British Columbia. 
1 Encyc. Brit, article " North American Indians." 



234 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



The Japanese facial form and expression is found 
constantly among the Mexicans, and retains it- 
self at times even after admixture with Spanish 
blood, such as constitutes the bulk of the Mexicans 
of to-day ; some of the Mexicans, however, are 
dark as Hindus, whom they resemble at times. 
In the remote parts of Peru and Bolivia the 
Asiatic type of face constantly arrests the 
traveller's attention, and to this the native custom 
of the wearing of the pigtail or queue of course 
lends added significance. Among the Indians 
of the uplands of Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador the 
queue is very general. In the general appear- 
ance, however, the countenance of the native is 
often strikingly like the Chinese and Japanese, 
as well as the Tibetans, and this is a matter which 
cannot easily be set aside. Some resemblances 
may be traced in the illustrations given here. 1 

Personally, I have been greatly impressed with 
this Oriental type among the natives of Mexico 
and Peru ; and I have found that educated 
Peruvians and Mexicans regard it as a distinct 
probability that the aborigines show early Chinese 
influence. " All I can say is," said the newly- 
appointed Mexican minister 2 to the Court of 
St. James's, as we conversed upon the subject, 
" that the indigenes of Yucatan, in some cases, 
are Chinese. That is to say, they resemble them 
facially, and they speak like them : and, indeed, 
some close resemblance between native and 
Chinese words has been found recently." 

A further point worthy of note is the marked 
1 See pp. 160, 234. 2 February, 1912. 



CONFLICTING TESTIMONIES 235 



sympathy or affinity which seems to exist between 
Chinese or Japanese immigrants into Peru and 
the natives, and 1 such immigrants are fairly 
plentiful. The Chinaman seems to drop into his 
place at once, as if he were returning to some 
ancient home. In the small remote villages he 
seems part of the people, and he shortly has at 
his service and disposal Indian and Chola women 
who soon acknowledge him as their lord, without 
any sense of repugnance. The Chinaman, how- 
ever, is generally regarded as raquitico in Peru, 
and his progeny with the native woman do not 
appear readily to survive, although further 
observation would be necessary to establish this 
as a scientific fact. 

It has been a subject for constant remark that 
the native Mexicans are quite dissimilar to the 
people of the lands to the eastward — Europe and 
Africa— but that they are " not unlike the Mon- 
goloid races to the west, the people of North and 
East Asia, and to some extent of the Polynesians., 
The general tendency among anthropologists has 
been to admit a common origin, however remote, 
between the tribes of Tartary and America." 1 
It may be that the near future will help us in 
this matter ; the awakening of China, possibly 
to be followed up by a greater knowledge of 
and research in that and other parts of Asia, may 
bring to light something regarding early con- 
tact with America. There is a new ferment in 
Asia, stronger perhaps than ever to -day. 

To consider now briefly the question of lan- 
1 Encyc. Brit, " Mexico." 



236 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



guage, the supposed affinity in linguistic matters 
between the Mongolian people and the early 
Americans has also been a well-discussed theme. 
It has been exhaustively analysed by a writer 
before quoted, 1 who arrives at a result in con- 
formity with his other conclusions, that there is 
no foundation for such supposed affinity. " There 
is one prominent example, which has often been 
put forward, of a supposed monosyllabic 
American language ; and its relation to the 
Chinese has frequently been asserted — a relation-^ 
ship, it has been said, extending both to its 
vocabulary and its grammar. This is the Otomi, 
spoken in and near the Valley of Mexico." The 
Otomies, it will be recollected, were a warlike 
people who inhabited part of the Valley of Mexico 
in territory adjacent to the Aztecs, and who gave 
such fierce battle to Cortes and his defeated 
soldiers after the famous Noche Triste and retreat 
from the siege of Tenochtitlan or Mexico city, 
along the fateful causeway. 2 

" Some have thought that the Maya of Yuca- 
tan has in its vocabulary a certain number of 
Chinese elements, but all these can readily be 
explained on the doctrine of coincidences. 
Indeed, coincidences of equal worth have been 
marshalled, and show that the Nahuatl is an 
Aryan dialect descended from the Sanscrit. In 
fine, any, even the remotest, linguistic connec- 
tion between American and Mongolian languages 
has yet to be shown, and any linguist who con- 
siders the radically diverse genius of the two 
1 Brinton, ante. 2 See Prescott ; also my " Mexico/' 



CONFLICTING TESTIMONIES 237 



groups of tongues will not expect to find such 
relationship," says Dr. Brinton. 

A more recent authority 1 says : " This original 
connection, if it may be accepted, would seem 
to belong to a long-past period, to judge from 
the failure of all attempts to discover an affinity 
between the languages of America and Asia. At 
whatever date the Americans began to people 
America, they must have had time to import or 
develop the numerous families of languages 
actually found there, in none of which has com- 
munity of origin been satisfactorily proved with 
any other language-group at home or abroad. 
In Mexico itself the languages of the Nahua 
nations, of which the Aztec is the best-known 
dialect, show no connection of origin with the 
language of the Otomi tribes, nor either of these 
with the languages of the regions of the ruined 
cities of Central America, the Quiche of Guate- 
mala and the Maya of Yucatan." 

Bancroft, 2 in dealing with the coast languages 
of North America, points to the great diversity 
of such languages and dialects on the sea- 
board. " In California the confusion becomes 
interminable : as if Babel-builders from every 
quarter of the earth had here met to the eternal 
confounding of all ; yet there are linguistic 
families, even in California, principally in the 
northern part. South of Acapulco, on the 
Mexican coast, the Aztec tongue holds for some 
distance. It is not at all improbable that Malays, 

1 The article " Mexico " in the Encyc. Brit., last edition. 

2 " Native Races," vol. iii. 



238 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



Chinese, or Japanese, or all of them, did at some 
time appear in what is now North America, in 
such numbers as materially to influence lan- 
guage, but hitherto no Asiatic nor European 
tongue, excepting always the Eskimo, has been 
found in America. Theorisers enough there have 
been and will be ; half -fledged scientists, ignorant 
of what others have done, or rather failed to do, 
will not cease to bring forward wonderful 
analogies and striking conceptions." " The 
absurdity of these speculations," he adds, " is 
apparent to all but the speculator. The x\bbe 
Brasseur de Bourbourg, who has given the subject 
more years of study and more pages of printed 
matter than any other writer, unless it be the 
half -crazed Lord Kingsborough, first attempts 
to prove that the Maya languages are derived 
from the Latin, Greek, English, German, Scan- 
dinavian, or other Aryan tongues ; then that all 
these languages are but offshoots from the 
Maya itself, which is the only true primeval lan- 
guage. So much for intemperate speculation, 
whether learned or shallow." 

The only conclusion, it would appear, in this 
connection, that can be arrived at is that a period 
extremely remote must have elapsed since any 
affinity in language between Asia and America 
existed, and that during this long period this 
language has passed into its present varied and 
distinct forms. 

As showing how opinion and knowledge 

change and develop, a very recent writer 1 upon 

1 " The Wanderings of People," Haddon, Cambridge 
University Press, London, 191 1. 



CONFLICTING TESTIMONIES 239 



this subject leaves an open door to the 
prehistoric immigrant. He considers that 
" ethnologists are generally agreed as to the 
similarity of type prevailing among most of the 
peoples of the New World, which points to a 
common parentage/' and remarks upon the re- 
semblance to a Mongolian type, which has been 
discussed already here, and holds that it is to 
Asia rather than to Europe that we must look for 
the first ancestors of the American Indians. Not- 
withstanding the great number of languages 
existing in America, and especially in Mexico, 
as has been remarked, there is, it is considered, 
" a closer affinity between them than previously 
supposed, and it has even been said that ' lan- 
guage in America is the unmistakable voice of 
a race, echoed through a thousand vernacular 
dialects/ " Various migrations of peoples from 
the Old World, Europe as well as Asia, at various 
periods are here held to be the rational postulate, 
and that view seems to be the latest upon the 
subject. Immigrants from Asia appear to have 
" proceeded down the Pacific slope and to have 
populated Central and South America, with an 
overflow into the south of North America," 
according to this writer. 

This entering of America from Asia from the 
north and down the Pacific coast zone appears 
to me a natural supposition. If we regard the 
geography of the twin continents, we see how 
unlikely it was that these prehistoric immigrants 
would forsake the line of least resistance and 
cross the barrier of the North and South 



240 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



American Cordilleras. Even to-day these moun- 
tains, throughout their eight or ten thousand 
miles length, are only crossed by a few difficult 
railways, such as the Canadian Pacific and 
Central Pacific in North America, and the Oroya 
and Transandine Railway in Peru and Chile. 
Heavy gradients and curves and incessant snow- 
plough fighting are the means by which these 
communications between the Pacific seaboard and 
the American interior are kept up. But it is 
easy to see how, in the few places where these 
mountains break down — as in Southern Cali- 
fornia, giving entrance to Arizona, Colorado, and 
Mexico, and, in Central America, in Tehuantepec 
and Guatemala — these prehistoric people might 
have passed behind them. The Cliff Dwellers 
and the Aztecs may have been part of successive 
waves which left their human eddies. The other 
parts of South America appear to have been 
peopled by another stream of immigrants, with 
whom the mound-builders of the Mississippi, the 
Caribs, and the culture area of northern South 
America are connected. 

Possibly it is worthy of remark — I have re- 
marked it in my travels — that as regards the 
supposed Mongolian affinity a " Chinese " in- 
flexion occurs, or seems to occur, in some place- 
names in the interior of Peru. Examples of such 
are Puntou, Punchao, and others, little Indian 
hamlets on the Maranon. Pronounced by the 
natives they are exactly like Chinese words. 
Punchao is a Quechua word, meaning " sun " 
and " eye." Yonan is a Peruvian coast town. In 




COLOSSAL HEAD CARVED IN DIORITE, MEXICO, 



To face p. 240. 



CONFLICTING TESTIMONIES 241 



other ways also the nomenclature of things and 
places and the inflexion of the voice seem 
markedly Chinese, and are so commented upon 
by Peruvians of the interior. 

The case, however, for linguistic affinity is 
not of a nature, as far as present knowledge 
goes, to yield much support to the theory of 
Mongolian origin, and we must turn now to the 
field of supposed similarities in symbols, devices, 
ornamentations, and other matters, such as have 
furnished food for discussion among archaeo- 
logists. 

Of course, between the very remote periods 
of early culture and the European contact by 
the advent of Columbus, Cortes, Pizarro, and 
others, there is no reason why immigrants should 
not have arrived on the west coast of America, 
no records of whom have remained. There was 
no obstacle to communication between Asia, or, 
indeed, the South Sea Islands, with what are 
now the coasts of California, Mexico, and Peru, 
and, as has been mentioned, junks have con- 
stantly drifted over. There is, indeed, a legend 
that a Chinese junk in the time of Kublai Khan 
reached the coast of Peru. 1 Kublai Khan, the 
founder of the Mongols, who lived from 121 6 
to 1294, delighted in accounts of foreign 
countries, and sent out great armaments by sea 
and many expeditions, some of which reached 
the States of Southern India, Eastern Africa, 
and even Madagascar. These expeditions were 
brought about by an inordinate love for the 

1 Diccionario Hispano-Americano, Lima. 
16 



242 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



nominal extension of his empire by the exaction 
of tribute and the claiming of homage and sub- 
mission. He built enormous palaces, patronised 
literature, and had a keen desire for knowledge. 
He caused to be constructed great astronomical 
instruments, and established an elaborate system 
of posts and mail-carriers throughout the country ; 
and it is a matter of history that he dared 
for the poor and took measures to relieve their 
distresses. In Peru the system of posts through- 
out the Inca Empire was a remarkable feature 
— post-houses and runners being maintained by 
the Government ; and the care that the Inca 
rulers took of the welfare of the poor forms one 
of the most characteristic parts of their regimen. 

Kublai Khan's time was, of course, much 
subsequent to the establishing of the Inca 
dynasty in the eleventh or twelfth century, but 
it was at this period, or later, according to the 
Inca historians, that many of the great buildings 
of the Incas were erected. It is at least argu- 
able that Mongolian influence crossed the Pacific 
to America at that time, as well as previously. 
Every succeeding Inca chief built his own temple 
anew, but it is conceivable that those of the later 
chiefs, from Pachacutec to Huayna-Capac, which 
are among the most solid remaining, were influ- 
enced in their character by Asiatic emissaries 
of Kublai Khan. I do not know if this view has 
been considered before, and there are difficulties 
in the way of its acceptance. 

In discussing this matter of Asiatic origin 
for the American cultures, a recent authority 



CONFLICTING TESTIMONIES 243 



says : " There are details of American civilisa- 
tion which are not easily accounted for on 
the supposition that they were borrowed 
from Asia. They do not seem ancient 
enough to warrant a remote Asiatic origin of 
the nations of America, but rather to be the 
results of comparatively modern intercourse 
between Asia and America. Humboldt com- 
pared the Mexican calendar with that in use in 
Eastern Asia. The Mongols, Tibetans, Chinese, 
and other neighbouring nations have a cycle or 
series of twelve animals, viz., rat, bull, tiger, 
hare, dragon, serpent, horse, goat, ape, cock, 
dog, pig, which may possibly be an imitation 
of the ordinary Babylonian-Greek Zodiac familiar 
to ourselves. The Mongolian people not only 
count their lunar months by these signs, but they 
reckon the successive days by them, as rat-day, 
bull-day, tiger-day, &c, and also by combining 
the twelve signs in rotation with the elements, 
they obtain a means of making each year in 
the sixty-year cycle, or the wood-rat year, the 
fire-tiger year, &c. This method is highly arti- 
ficial, and the reappearance of its principle in 
the Mexican and Central American calendar is 
suggestive of importation from Asia. 1 

Humboldt considered that the intricacy and 
perfection of the Maya calendar system embody- 
ing so highly developed and accurate a chron- 
ology, which had amazed European scholars, 
could not have been evolved in America, nor 

1 Encyc. Brit. " Mexico." See also p. 113 of the present 
work. 



244 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



be of native origin, and that it must have had a 
connection or origin in the Far East. A point 
of resemblance to which attention has since been 
called is " the Mexican belief in the nine stages 
of heaven and hell, an idea which nothing in 
Nature would directly suggest to a barbaric 
people, but which corresponds to the idea of 
successive heavens and hells among Brahmans 
and Buddhists, who apparently learned it (in 
common with our own ancestors) from the 
Babylonian-Greek astronomical theory of suc- 
cessive stages or concentric planetary spheres 
belonging to the planets," &C 1 

The fact that there are constantly recurring 
similarities of ornamentation and device on 
pottery, textile work, and carvings throughout 
early American and Asiatic countries is, of 
course, a matter of common knowledge, and it 
is difficult to explain these as coincidences, 
and to believe that they are not in any way of 
common origin or derived the one from the 
other. Among such matters are lines, waves, 
zigzags, fish forms, wedge forms, and other 
patterns, encountered in Mexico, Central 
America, Peru, the Cliff Dwellings, and even in 
British Columbia, corresponding with each other 
and with apparently similar forms on objects of 
art from Babylonia, Chaldea, Polynesia, Persia, 
Egypt, &c, and, indeed, a comparison of such 
objects or their illustration the world over will 
furnish endless examples. Among the most 
persistent of these is the " Greek fret," carved 
1 Encyc. Brit., " Mexico." 




Fig. i is a pattern on a textile fabric, a poncho dug up from a 

tomb in the ancient necropolis of Ancon on the coast of Peru, 

slightly north of Lima. 
Fig. 2 is a pattern on pottery from the same place. 
Fig. 3 is from a carved-stone vase * from the Mosquito Coast in 

Nicaragua, now in the British Museum, where I sketched it. 
Figs. 4 and 5 are from the ruins of Mitla, in Southern Mexico, 

sculptured in stone and mosaic work on the walls. 
Fig. 6 is from the plateau region of Central Mexico, sculptured 

stone, near Zochicalco. 
Fig. 7 is from pottery of the Cliff Dwellers in Arizona or Colorado. 
Figs. 8 and 9 are native ornamentation on a carved cocoanut 

shell and dish from Hiva-Oa and Fatu-Hiva Island of Polynesia 



246 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



on stone in so many places, whether in Mexico 
or Peru, whether in Greece or at Baalbek, and 
worked upon textile fabrics and pottery in 
numerous widely separated regions. The accom- 
panying illustration shows a few occurrences 
of these, which I have collected from various 
sources. 

The same device occurs on the Guatemala 
Stelae and on the facade of the Chichen Itza, 
Yucatan, ruins, and upon the pre-Inca mono- 
lithic doorway of Tiahuanako in Bolivia, and 
on the early Peruvian coast pottery, most of 
which are illustrated in this book. A combina- 
tion of this design with a " stepped " pattern, 
or the stepped pattern alone, is also singularly 
prevalent. It is displayed at Mitla very promi- 
nently (Fig. 5 and general illustrations), and on 
the Peruvian coast pottery, and is part of the 
central hieroglyphic on the Tiahuanako door- 
way, and is seen on the belts of Peruvian 
natives (see page 234). This device must un- 
doubtedly have some special significance, and 
it is interesting to observe it, figured upon 
ancient Oriental textile fabrics, one of which 
may be seen illustrated in the Encyclopaedia 
Britannica, from the Victoria and Albert Museum, 
where around the edge of a carpet is the Mitla 
design almost exactly. These devices, as far 
as my observation goes, are found on the pre- 
Inca and pre-Aztec objects, but not on the Inca 
and Aztec objects themselves. In the publica- 
tion mentioned there is also an illustration of 
an Egypto-Roman textile fabric of the third or 



CONFLICTING TESTIMONIES 247 



fourth century, showing the " Greek " pattern. 
It is not difficult to imagine this design as having 
been brought from Asia to America on the belts 
and clothing of wanderers (see also page 194)- 
One of the writers before quoted-— Dr. Brinton 
— who is very positive as to the impossibility 
of a foreign origin, either of race, ornament, or 
theology, says : " The widespread belief that the 
American tribes are genealogically connected 
with the Mongolians is constantly directing the 
studies of many Americanists, very much as did 
at one time the belief that the red men are the 
present representatives of the ' ten lost tribes ' of 
Israel. Neither in language, culture, nor 
physical peculiarities is there any affinity. 
American culture was homebred, and has bor- 
rowed nothing from either Europe, Asia, or 
Africa. Compare the rich theology of Mexico 
or Peru with the barren myths of China. The 
theory of Governments, the method of house con- 
struction, the position of women, the art of war, 
are all equally diverse, equally un-Mongolian. It 
is useless to bring up single art products or 
devices . The sooner Americanists generally, and 
especially those of Europe, recognise the abso- 
lute autochthony of native American culture, the 
more valuable will their studies become. It is 
no longer in season to quote the opinions of 
Humboldt and his contemporaries, as we know 
that the development of human culture is 
governed by laws with which they were un- 
acquainted. The conclusion of Cuvier, who 
supported the American-Mongolian affinity, as 



248 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



also that of Virchow, who maintained that the 
Eskimos are of Mongolian origin, cannot be 
supported " — according to Brinton. 

One of the most universal symbols or orna- 
ments found throughout many lands, whether of 
Asia or America, and belonging to varied 
periods, is the familiar form of the Swastika, 
popularly regarded as sort of good luck charm. 
It appears in Mexico, Peru, Java, Babylon, 
Greece, and elsewhere, in one form or another, 
and is of much interest. The device is one of 
the forms of the pre-Christian cross most fre- 
quently met with. The use of the cross as a 
religious symbol in pre-Christian times, it will 
be recollected, and among non-Christian peoples 
may probably be regarded as almost universal, 
and in many cases it was connected with some 
form of Nature -worship. The swastika is very 
widely distributed, and is found on all kinds of 
objects. " Ten centuries before the Christian era 
it was used in India and China as a religious 
emblem, and it is met with on Buddhist coins and 
inscriptions from various parts of India. 1 It is 
on record that a fine sepulchral urn found at 
Shroptian, in Norfolk, now in the British 
Museum, is ornamented with a swastika. This 
has " three bands of cruciform ornaments round 
it, the two uppermost of which are plain circles, 
each containing a plain cross ; the lowest is 
formed of a series of squares, in each of which 
is a swastika." See also the illustration in the 



See article in the Encyc. Brit. 



CONFLICTING TESTIMONIES 249 



present book of the pottery of the Cliff Dwellers 
of Colorado (page 90). 

In the illustration given of the " Greek " 
patterns the device of the swastika might appear 
to have formed the foundation of the ornament 
on the carved coconut shell from the Mar- 
quesas : a species of gammated cross enclosed 
in a circle. As mentioned in a former chapter, 
the swastika was found freely depicted on 
pottery from the ruins of the Cliff Dwellers in 
Arizona, and it has been encountered among 
aboriginal decorations on the coast of Maine. 
In the Vatican Museum there is " an Etruscan 
fibula of gold which is marked with the swastika, 
but it is a device of such common occurrence 
on objects of pre-Christian origin, that it 
is hardly necessary to specify individual 
instances. The same holds good with the cross 
as a device in various forais, often enclosed in 
a circle, and such are to be found in every 
important museum. The early Christians were 
ever eager to trace hidden prophetical allusions 
to the truth pf their faith, and strove to find 
such in the pre-Christian cross," says the 
authority last quoted. 

The burial-mound of Bharahat, about 
120 miles south-west of Allahabad, when ex- 
cavated in 1874 was found to contain a monu- 
ment, one of the most imposing and handsome 
in India. " There were four entrances facing 
the cardinal points, and this gave the whole 
ground-plan of the monument, and no doubt 
designedly so, the shape of a gigantic svastika 



250 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



(a symbol of good fortune). The age of the 
monument has been approximately fixed in the 
third century B.C." Persia is regarded as being 
the real home of the swastika, but some have 
looked upon the device as the remaining emblem 
of a vanished universal culture. 

Brinton 1 says much that is of interest re- 
garding the origin of such symbols. " My 
intention is to combat the opinions of those 
writers who assert that because certain well- 
known Oriental symbols, as the Ta Ki, the 
Triskeles, the Svastika, and the Cross, are found 
among the American Aborigines, they are 
evidence of Mongolian, Buddhistic, Christian, or 
Aryan immigration, previous to the discovery by 
Columbus, and I shall also try to show that the 
position is erroneous of those 2 who maintain that 
' it is impossible to give a satisfactory explana- 
tion of the religious significances of the cross 
as a religious symbol in America/ They can 
be shown to have arisen from certain fixed rela- 
tions of man to his environment, and therefore 
are of little value in tracing ethnic affinities." 

This author then analyses the three-legged 
device of the Isle of Man, and traces its origin 
to Sicilian coins and those of Lycia in Asia 
Minor, struck five hundred years before our era, 
its occurrence on textile articles to-day in the 
latter region, and upon Slavic and Teutonic vases 
from mounds of the bronze age in Central and 

1 Brinton, " Sacred Symbols of America." 

2 Such as William H. Holmes, " Ancient Cities of the New 
World," Chicago. 



CONFLICTING TESTIMONIES 251 



Northern Europe. He reiterates its resemblance 
to the Chinese symbol of the Ta Ki, or " The 
Great Writer/' and mentions that its occurrence 
in America has been taken by a French ethnolo- 
gist as indicating the preaching of Buddhistic 
doctrines in the New World. 

" This well-known form of the Svastika, or 
hooked or gammated cross, occurs, as has been 
pointed out often, in Greco-Italic and Iberian 
remains, and upon its archaeological distribution 
much has been written and various origins or 
meanings assigned to it. Whatever its signifi- 
cance, we are safe in considering it a form of 
the cross. The widely spread mystic purpose 



of the cross symbol has long been a matter of 
comment. In many parts of America the native 
regarded it with reverence anterior to the arrival 
of Europeans, as in the Old World it was long 
a sacred symbol before it became the distinctive 
emblem of Christianity." 

In an interesting exposition the same writer 
draws the deductions that the before-mentioned 
emblems, which in varying forms are found 
scratched upon rocks or wood, or embroidered 
on buffalo robes and other fabrics in primitive 
North American art, are developments of a 
depicting of the sunrise, or sun-cycles. He gives 
the Aztec figure of the year-cycle in its principal 




252 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



elements, taken from the atlas to Duran's 
" Historia de Nueva Espana," adding : " In this 
remarkable figure we observe the development 
and primary signification of those world-wide 
symbols the square, the cross, the wheel, the 
circle, and the svastika." 

" The full analysis of this suggestive and 
authentic astronomy," adds Brinton, " will reveal 
the secret of most of the rich symbolism and 
mythology of the American nations. It is easy 
to see how it was derived from the Nahuatl doc- 
trine of the Four Motions of the Sun, with its 
accessories of the Four Ages of the World. The 
Tree of Life, so constantly recurring as a design 
in Maya and Mexican art, is but another out- 
growth of the same symbolic expression for the 
same idea. That we find the same figurative 
symbolism in China, India, Lycia, Assyria, and 
the valley of the Nile, and on ancient urns from 
Etruria, Iberia, Gallia, Sicilia, and Scythia need 
not surprise us, and ought not to prompt us to 
assert any historic connection on this account 
between the early development of man in the 
New and Old Worlds." * 

Here, however, are some views in an opposite 
direction : — 

" Humboldt also discussed the Mexican doc- 
trine of the four ages of the world, belonging 
to water, air, earth, and fire, and ending respec- 
tively by earthquake, tempest, and conflagration. 
The resemblance of this to some versions of the 
Hindu doctrine of the four ages of Yuga is hardly 
1 See also p. 91. 



CONFLICTING TESTIMONIES 253 



to be accounted for except on the hypothesis 
that the Mexican theology contains ideas learned 
from Asiatics." 1 

The idea or occurrence of four as a sacred 
number has occupied the attention of various 
writers on Peru, among them a Peruvian savant, 
whose studies on ancient American lore have 
been profound, and whose opinions are worthy 
of credence. 2 This is Dr. Pablo Patron, from 
whom I will translate : — 

" The number four appears as a sacred number 
in the Old Testament, and was also so con- 
sidered by the primitive people of Babylon and 
Assyria. Many of the early civilised people of 
America have placed it in the same category. 
Is this merely accidental? I do not think so, 
or at least not as regards the early Peruvians. 
The Chaldeans and Egyptians divided the world 
into four houses or regions, according to the 
cardinal points and corresponding to four great 
gods. ' Thothmes III. is styled the great king 
who has taken possession of the four regions 
of the world,' according to Maspero and other 
writers, and from the very remote times of ancient 
Chaldea kings took the title of Lords of the Four 
Regions of the Earth, among them Naramsin. I 
believe, with other writers, that the earliest 
Chinese civilisation came, directly or indirectly, 
from Mesopotamia, and it is not surprising to find 
this conception of lord of the four regions of the 
earth among the ancient Chinese. The ancient 

1 Encyc. Brit., " Mexico." 

2 Dr. Pablo Patron of Lima, " Notas Sueltas." 



254 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



Peruvians, still more strongly affiliated than the 
Chinese to that old culture, did what was to 
have been expected— divided their territory into 
four parts and gave a name to each one." 

Quoting Garcilasso, the Inca historian, the 
above writer continues : — 

" The Inca kings divided the empire into four 
parts which they called Tahuantinsuyu, which 
means the four parts of the earth, corresponding 
with the four principal parts of the heavens — 
east, west, north, south. The people addressed 
their king on occasions as Tahuantinsuya Capac 
—that is, Master of the Four Quarters of the 
Globe. Those who maintain that this designa- 
tion or partition of the earth began with the 
Incas are mistaken. It existed long before." 

The same writer also discusses the similarity 
of appearance between Asiatic races, especially 
in the matter of skin and hair, and the aborigines 
of America, which has been brought forward by 
many observers, and he adduces matters in con- 
nection therewith concerning the people of early 
Mesopotamia. He also draws comparison be- 
tween the primitive craft of Peru and Mesopo- 
tamia and Egypt. The catamaran and rafts 
formed of inflated sheep or goat skins used in 
very remote times by the primitive navigators 
of the Mesopotamian rivers, and shown in bas- 
relief on the Assyrian palaces, and the mode of 
propulsion of these was similar to that used at 
the times of the Incas by the Indians on the 
coast of Arica in Peru-Chile in their craft formed 
of sealskins, and, indeed, used as late as 1730 



CONFLICTING TESTIMONIES 255 



by Valparaiso fishermen. He quotes Garcilasso 
to the effect that the Peruvians navigated this 
kind of craft in the same way as the Mesopo- 
tamians. He points out that the Changos of 
Atacama on the Chile -Peruvian coast still use 
these singular craft. He also shows how, in 
his view, the Quechua word for boat is derived 
from the Egyptian and Sumerian words. 

It is to be recollected also that inflated rafts 
of this character were, and still are, employed 
in Mexico, on the rivers emptying into the Pacific 
coast. The catamaran is the native craft of the 
Pacific Islands of Polynesia. Another analogy 
is drawn between the rush vessels of Mesopo- 
tamia spoken of by Isaiah, the "vessels of bull- 
rushes upon the waters," 1 and the rush canoes, 
junks, or balsas which were used by the early 
Peruvians, and are still a familiar feature to the 
traveller on Lake Titicaca. The Egyptians and 
Chaldeans used these craft in the same form, and 
one authority, 2 as is well known, likened them 
to those figured on the tomb of Rameses III. 
of Egypt. 

The author before quoted 3 draws attention to 
the veneration both in early Bible history and 
among the Incas and pre-Incas for the " high 
places." It was the hill of Huanakaure, about 
two and a half leagues from Cuzco, where, the 
legend states, the golden sceptre of Manco 
Capac, the founder of the dynasty, sank into the 
earth as a sign of the ordained site where a 

1 Isa. xviii. 2. 2 Castelnau. 

3 Dr. Pablo Patron. 



256 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



tabernacle was to be raised by, order of the Sun 
God, and which became the principal huaca or 
holy place of the Incas. He, however, argues 
that this was a pre-Inca institution, and shows 
how, in his view, the word Huanakaure comes 
from Assyrian and Sumerian words meaning 
" mountain-creator." 

There is indeed much in fact, lore, and 
legend concerning the early Peruvians which 
transports us to the ancient cradles of civilisa- 
tion on the Euphrates and the Nile. There are 
subtle breaths and whispers which have come 
down through the ages, and which may yet con- 
ceivably be wrought into some clear voice of 
history, when intensive thought and loving study 
shall have waked them from neglect and slumber. 



CHAPTER XIV 



AN ENIGMA OF THE OCEAN 

A speculative voyage — Stepping-stones to Asia — Easter 
Island, and others — Great stone images — The "wicked 
giants " of Genesis — Possible connection with Peru and 
Mexico — With Polynesia — Great stone houses — The 
archaic Noah — Size of the Colossi — Other remains — 
Tablets and hieroglyphs — Analogy with Tiahuanako and 
Bolivia — Are they phallic emblems ? — Log of the Flora — 
Dimensions of the images. 

We have completed our survey, so far, of the 
great regions of early American culture : which 
way does our path lie now? Consciously or un- 
consciously we have been looking to the West, 
but it is with some diffidence that we shall 
adventure forth to follow those threads of specu- 
lative imagination which seem to conduct us 
across the great Pacific towards the continent of 
Asia. 

Yet, like great stepping-stones upon this path, 
thousands of miles apart, are lonely islands, 
strung out thinly between the New World and 
the Old, containing the ruins of strange monu- 
ments and structures of unknown builders, some 
of them absolutely unexplainable, almost appal- 
ling — like those especially of Easter Island — in 
their weirdness and peculiarity. The suggestion 
has been made from time to time and by differ- 
ent observers, that these far-scattered relics of 



258 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



prehistoric stone -shaping man, extending west- 
ward into Polynesia and towards Asia, may be 
connected in some way with the builders of the 
megalithic structures of Mexico and Peru, and 
that must be our excuse for endeavouring to 
reach the Asiatic coast from America by the 
route of these mysterious islands. 

These island remains are principally those of 
Easter Island, Pitcairn Island, Tahiti, the 
Marquesas, Tonga or Friendly Islands, Lele 
and Ponape, of the Caroline Islands, and the 
Marianas or Ladrones. 

Some of these remote islands have been the 
scene of very extensive work by wall -building 
man, the vestiges of whose activities are no less 
curious than those already considered on the 
American continents. 

To begin with Easter Island or Rapanui, 
which lies two thousand miles west of the South 
American coast of Peru and Chile, to which 
latter republic it belongs, and fourteen hundred 
miles east of Pitcairn Island. What shall be 
said of colossal stone images standing in rows 
facing the sea on this lonely land surrounded by 
the trackless, glittering ocean on every side ? 
colossal images, the only explanation of whose 
fashioning is the fanciful one that they were 
made by a race of wicked giants, for whose 
punishment the Flood was brought about ! 

" For there were giants in those days," 1 or 
at least we are so told on the authority of the 
Bible, and the singular theory has been advanced 
1 Gen. vi. 4. 




EASTER ISLAND, STATUES FACING CRATER LAKE. 




EASTER ISLAND STATUES. 



To face p. 258. 



AN ENIGMA OF THE OCEAN 259 



that these great, hideous images were set up 
by them. 

The great images of Easter Island are carved 
out of a grey, trachitic lava, quarried in the 
island at some distance from their position, and 
some of them are estimated to weigh up to 250 
tons each. How were they cut and sculptured, 
and how were they moved from the quarry? 
We must ask the Pacific winds and waves ; for 
the only theory or fancy, whichever it may be, 
is that these images are a relic of antediluvian 
days, of the world before the time of the archaic 
Noah. It has even been stated that there is 
evidence that a race of giants inhabited the island 
and that they were destroyed by some cataclysm, 
for it is demonstrable that the statue -builders 
were interrupted in their work. 

The largest of these colossi is 70 feet high. A 
smaller image, 8 feet in height and weighing 
four tons, is in the British Museum, brought home 
years ago by a British warship. The illustration 
showing a man on horseback beside one of the 
figures on the island gives an idea of relative 
size, and the grim row of mighty stony visages 
and half -human trunks on the slope of the hill 
facing the extinct crater lake, like some arrested 
sentinels of the childhood of the world, strikes 
deep into the imagination. . 

The features of these images and the expres- 
sion of their faces are said by some observers 
to be unlike any known type among the 
Polynesian peoples at the present time. Indeed, 
the prehistoric remains which occur on this and 



260 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



other islands of the oceanic region involves one 
of the m,ost perplexing problems concerning 
mankind in early times in the whole world. 

The stone images are not the only wonder- 
ful archaeological remains on Easter Island. 
Immense platforms of large, flat stones are 
found, then joints fitted together without mortar, 
generally built facing the sea upon slopes and 
headlands. The sea -faces of some of these 
structures are nearly 30 feet high, 200 to 300 
feet long, and 30 feet wide, whilst some of the 
squared blocks of stone are 6 feet long. Huge 
stone pedestals exist on the land side of these 
platforms on a broad terrace, upon which once 
stood colossal stone images carved somewhat into 
the shape of a human trunk. On some of the 
platforms there are upwards of a dozen images, 
now thrown from their pedestals and lying in 
all directions. Their usual height is from 14 
to 16 feet, but the largest are 37 feet, while 
some are only about 4 feet. The top of the 
heads of the images is cut flat to receive 
round crowns made of a reddish, vesicular 
tuff, found at a crater about eight miles dis- 
tant from the quarry where the images were 
cut. A number of these crowns still lie at the 
crater apparently ready for removal, some of the 
largest being over 10 feet in diameter. 

In addition to the images, there exist in one 
part of the island the remains of stone houses 
nearly 100 feet long by 20 feet wide. Their 
walls are built in courses of large flat stones 
without mortar, and are about 5 feet thick and 





GIANT STATUE OX EASTER ISLAND. 



To face p. 



AN ENIGMA OF THE OCEAN 261 



over 5 feet high, lined on the inside with upright 
slabs, painted with geometrical figures and repre- 
sentations of animals. The roofs are formed 
by placing slabs so that each course overlaps 
the lower one until the opening becomes about 

5 feet wide, when it is covered with flat slabs 
reaching from one side to the other. 

The lava rocks near these curious houses are 
carved into the resemblance of various animals 
and human faces, forming probably a kind of 
picture-writing. Wooden tablets covered with 
signs and figures have also been found. " There 
are hieroglyphics chiselled on the faces of the 
tombs and on the crater walls, lines of curiously 
carved shapes and symbols, among which the 
shape of a fish constantly appears, and carvings 
which bear a remarkable resemblance to those of 
the ancient Aymaras of Peru." 1 

But how were these great works of sculpture 
made? The only ancient implement discovered 
on the island is a kind of stone chisel, but it 
seems impossible that the work could have been 
executed with such tools. Indeed, the whole 
subject is shrouded in mystery, and the present 
inhabitants of this small, remote Pacific island 
in the 109th meridian W. and the 27th parallel 
know absolutely nothing of the construction of 
these remarkable works which surround them, 
although they have some legends about their 
own origin. These traditions are that they came 
from other islands in two large canoes, in remote 
times, their king, Hotu Metua, or " Prolific 

1 From an account published in the London press in 1906. 



262 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



Father/' in the one and their queen in the other ; 
and when they arrived they termed the land Te 
Pito Eehua— that is, " The Land in the Midst of 
the Sea." These doubtless were Polynesians, who 
were wonderful voyagers. 

It has been suggested that the fish carvings 
may indicate that these early immigrants held 
sacred some fish-god, somewhat as in the case 
of the early Peruvians. It is to be recollected 
that the large stone statue of Tiahuanako, near 
the Peru-Bolivia boundary, has a fish sculptured 
on its breast, as described before. Dr. Alfred 
Russel Wallace, in a letter 1 bearing upon this 
subject which he wrote me, speaks of " the re- 
semblance of human sculptures on some of the 
earliest stone buildings of Bolivia with the Easter 
Island statue in the British Museum." This 
statue, it will be recollected, was brought to 
England some forty years ago by H.M.S. 
Topaze. " I was greatly struck by the resem- 
blance," he says, " and in the drawing of the 
large gateway in Bolivia there are figures whose 
features resemble the very peculiar features of 
the Easter Island monuments, and have a very 
curious Caucasian aspect." 

To me, this grim idol, standing in the murky, 
untrodden colonnade of the British Museum, 
has somewhat the aspect of a gigantic negiro. 
In some respects it is well sculptured, and there 
is a singular device upon its back. The fellow 
image is much smaller and dilapidated. 

What can be the significance of these grim 
1 December, 191 1. 




To face p. 262. 



AN ENIGMA OF THE OCEAN 263 



statues ? No people could have erected them 
out of mere caprice. Is it possible that they 
had any phallic 1 significance and were erected 
by the " Prolific Father " of the legend, or by 
the wicked giants, or the " Sons of God " 
spoken of in Genesis in commemoration of their 
amours with the " daughters of men " in that 
extraordinary account? This, however, is but 
a fancy. 

The island was visited in July, 1906, by 
H.M.S. Cambrian and Flora, and the Admiralty 
kindly sent me an extract from the log of the 
latter vessel, in which the commanding officer 
wrote as follows : — 

" The images on the platforms, of which Cook 
and La Perouse wrote, have all fallen down 
and been broken, but many are still standing, 
at the base, up the side, and inside the crater 
of Mount Hoty-iti, from which they are cut out ; 
these, however, have no crowns ; the crowns of 
the fallen images are lying near them. 

" I measured the largest image cut out of the 
rock, lying on its back, and the back not yet 
detached from the stone of the hill : — 



Ft. In. 



Total length ... 
Total width ... 
Length of nose 
Width of lip... 
From lip to chin 



68 o 



10 o 



" 3 

5 7 

7 3 

3 o 



Chin projects from neck 
Length of ear 
Height of forehead ... 



12 2 



6 o 



Width 



9 6 



1 See p. 325. 



264 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



" The illustrations of the images in ' La 
Perouse's Voyages ' are very good ; those in 
Cook's do not at all do them justice. 

" The stone houses, in appearance like in- 
verted canoes, mentioned by La Perouse, have 
entirely disappeared, but there are stone huts 
on the south-west edge of the summit of the 
volcano Ranakao built out of layers of basaltic 
rock ; interior dimensions, i 5 feet by 8 feet by 
6 feet high, but with the entrance so low it is 
only possible to crawl in on the stomach. Near 
these huts are inscriptions on the rocks, and 
some of them have hieroglyphics on some of the 
stones forming their sides. Captain Cook men- 
tions as a peculiarity that the natives drank sea- 
water. A previous manager to the present one 
began building a wall right around the island 
to prevent the sheep getting to the sea, as he 
thought they drank it and that it would be harm- 
ful ; as a matter of fact, at various places on 
the seashore there are fresh-water springs at sea- 
level, uncovering at half -tide, and no doubt both 
natives and sheep were aware of this and drank 
fresh, not salt, water. 

" Most of the image platforms are more or 
less broken, but the facings of huge stones 
remain, and under these morais may be found 
skeletons and flint spearheads, &c. 

" The red tuff crowns of the images do not 
look as though they were cut out of rock, and 
I was told there is no similar rock to be found 
on the island — they look as though they were 
made of red volcanic clay and sun-dried. 



AN ENIGMA OF THE OCEAN 265 

" Fish, and sea crayfish or spiny lobster, are 
fairly plentiful. 

"Partridge (Chilian) are numerous on the 
island ; they are not in coveys, and both in 
feather and habits seem akin to Californian 
quail. Tame cats run wild are the only wild 
beasts, except the cattle which on the north and 
north-east of the island are practically quite 
wild. 

" From the positions at which the platforms 
with the images were placed, namely, overlooking 
coast indentations where there were possible 
landings, it seems probable that though these 
images may have been memorials to the dead,. 
they were also intended to intimidate the living 
and frighten any strangers away from the island. 

" The anchorage of Ovinipoo is in 17 fathoms, 
half a mile from the shore, and well protected 
from any winds but SSW. to ESE. ; the boats 
can get into a small cove, protected by an outer 
ridge of rock, for landing passengers, but the 
climb up the rocks is awkward." 

The question as to what, if any, relation the 
stone -shaping art of the unknown people of 
Easter Island had with that of the early Peru- 
vians is one which doubtless will come up for 
consideration in the future. It has been said 
that if the story written in these hieroglyphics of 
Easter Island could be read the veil might be 
lifted which shrouds the mystery of the early 
people of the Andes. 

Easter Island, however, is singularly remote, 
and few travellers reach it. The present in- 



266 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



habitants grow bananas, sugar-cane, &c, and 
keep a few goats. They number about one 
hundred, and are all Christianised, as the result 
of a Jesuit Mission in 1864. There is at least 
one link with Peru, in that the Peruvians, in 
1863 barbarously kidnapped and carried off a 
large proportion of the inhabitants to work in 
the guano diggings on the Chincha Islands off 
the Peruvian coast. Guano, like rubber and 
gold, has not failed to take its toll of human 
lives. 

Easter Island does not stand alone in its 
mystery. There are, as already stated, other 
works of unknown hands, equally remarkable, as 
will be described in the following chapters. 



CHARTER XV 



THE MYSTERIES OF THE ISLES 

Strange migrations — The Polynesians and others — The 
Papuans and Malaysians — Mystery of their origin— The 
Caucasians — Origin of the Polynesians — Clever navi- 
gators — Original home — Long sea journeys- — Polynesian 
ship-builders — Mythology — Decline — Character — 
Pitcairn Island — Tahiti — The Marquesas — Affinity with 
early America — Stone images — Stone platforms — Art — 
Tonga Islands — Megalithic remains — Caroline Islands — 
Lele and Ponape — Astonishing prehistoric structures — 
Metalanim— A Pacific Venice — Yap and other remains 
— Great basalt prisms — Metalanim harbour — Lele— The 
breakwater—The Marianas — Stone structures. 

The Oceanic isles of the Pacific undoubtedly have 
been in remote times the scene of some of the 
most remarkable migrations by water in the 
history of the world. Unsolved problems of 
emigrating and navigating races, black and 
brown, with whispers of sunken continents and 
severed archipelagoes, form the romance of 
these regions. 

These widely separated islands have been 
peopled by three different peoples, the Melane- 
sians, the Polynesians, and the Micronesians, 
forming two distinct divisions of mankind — the 
dark and the brown races. The Melanesians 



268 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



sometimes go by the name of Papuans, the Malay, 
name for the inhabitants of New Guinea, the 
principal home of the race. These people are 
physically of negroid type, nearly black, with flat 
noses, thick lips, and curly hair, and are regarded 
as the aborigines of Oceania, and constitute the 
oldest ethnic stock. They agree with the African 
negroes, and have a more or less remote con- 
nection with them. How these negroids came 
to occupy the oceanic region is a mystery. How 
did they reach these isolated Pacific Isles? For 
it is a remarkable fact, which makes their 
colonising all the more mysterious, that the 
blacks are unskilful sailors. 

The Polynesians, the brown people, on the 
contrary, were clever navigators, and there is 
evidence of their wanderings and canoe voyages. 

Whilst it is held as certain that Polynesians 
are an older ethnic stock than their black neigh- 
bours, they nevertheless must have migrated to 
the Pacific Islands at much later periods than 
the Malays or Papuans and their sub -families ; 
and the view generally adopted is that they, repre- 
sent a branch of the Caucasic division of man- 
kind, who at some very remote period, perhaps 
in the new Stone Age, migrated from the 
mainland of Asia. 

This migration appears to have proceeded 
via the Malay Archipelago, those " desirable 
islands " which have formed the theatre of action 
of many roving peoples, and which at some early 
time of man's history on the earth were probably 
connected by land-bridges with each other. The 



THE MYSTERIES OF THE ISLES 269 

first inhabitants of these islands were probably 
the black woolly-haired race, the Papuans, who 
gradually colonised the Eastern Pacific. 

The Polynesians are of a light brown colour, 
tall and well proportioned, with regular and often 
beautiful features, and in some cases are the 
physical equals of Europeans — or at least this is 
the case in Samoa and the Marquesas. Although 
both the brown and the black peoples living here 
had, in all probability, Asiatic ancestors in 
common, the Polynesian is to-day as he has ever 
been, a distinct race. Dr. Wallace, the great 
authority upon this subject, informed me as his 
opinion that there must have been " a stream 
of migration from East tropical Asia, where 
remnants of Caucasian races still exist, and 
these, intermixed perhaps with some Malay 
tribes, produced the fine Mahories of Samoa, the 
Sandwich Islands, and New Zealand." 

No doubt, in fact, is felt as to this migration, 
but the first advent of the Polynesian people 
into the Pacific must have occurred in times so 
remote that it cannot be fixed even by tradition. 
To cover such vast distances their migrations 
must have been made in stages, and, as stated, 
the earliest halting-place was in Malaysia, where 
some of their kind still remain on the west coast 
of Sumatra, from which point they extended east- 
wardly. It is held that the absence of Sanskrit 
roots in the Polynesian languages would seem 
to indicate that the migration of these Caucasians 
was in pre-Sanskritic times. 

But whilst no one has yet ventured to approxi- 



270 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



mate a definite date for these early movements, 
the history of the Hawaians, or Sandwich 
Islanders, has been traced to the fifth century, 
and from this it is adduced that their departure 
from Malaysia or the Indian Archipelago 
may be put at the first or second century.; 
Savaii, the largest of the Samoan Islands, is 
by tradition assigned as the Polynesian ancestral 
home in the East Pacific, and this is supported by 
linguistic and other evidence. From this point 
the Polynesians, or the various branches of the 
race, must have made their way in all directions. 

Of all the people so far considered in these 
islands or continents of the Pacific Ocean, the 
Polynesians were the principal navigators . Their 
migrations by sea, were they fully known, might 
furnish material for romantic adventure second 
to none, and, indeed, the journeyings of their 
known history are of great interest and have 
been well described by various authors. 1 It is 
certain that their skill in building vessels and 
their dexterity as navigators has declined since 
the white man from Europe associated with them. 
Rather than increasing their knowledge and 
powers from European seafaring nations in such 
matters, they appear to have lost it. Formerly 
they built decked vessels of planks, caulked and 
pitched — seaworthy craft capable of making 
voyages with one or two hundred persons and the 
necessary stores. They had a knowledge of the 
stars, and were able to direct their course 
thereby. And thus it was that they journeyed 
1 Especially u Journeyings of the Polynesians." 



THE MYSTERIES OF THE ISLES 271 



so far from the Indian Archipelago, taking 
advantage of westerly winds at certain seasons, 
which enabled them to overcome the obstacles 
of prevailing easterly winds and currents. 

The Polynesians were not a savage race when 
they entered the Pacific, but, as their elaborate 
historical legends show, possessed a considerable 
civilisation, from which to-day they have de- 
teriorated. They were strict in their barbaric 
religious observances, which came into the acts 
of their every-day life. They were polytheists, 
but had a conception of a god of a high order 
— Tangaloa — regarded as " the first and principal 
god, uncreated and existing from' the beginning, 
or from the time he emerged from the world of 
darkness." He was said to be "the father of 
all the gods and creator of all things," but was 
not considered an object of worship. As to 
their ideas of immortality, the Polynesians in- 
variably believe in the existence of the spirit 
of man after the death of the body." In some 
islands idols, bearing more or less resemblance 
to the human shape, were made. Sometimes 
large stone enclosures or a grove were made 
around them. 

We are reminded, in these vague conceptions 
of a Creator, of the " Unknown God " of the 
Mexicans and the Peruvians once more. The 
Polynesians had the same cannibalistic custom 
as the Aztecs, of eating a portion of a slain' 
enemy, for reasons of triumph or religion. Like 
the early American people, they have suffered 
at the hands of European civilisation, in strong 



272 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



drinks, the too sudden adoption of European 
clothing, and the " deadening effects of a sombre 
type of Christianity, in which over-zealous mis- 
sionaries suppressed the dances and free, joyous 
life of pagan times." Thus they decreasejd 
rapidly, although greater toleration of late has, 
in places, arrested the decline, and, says a recent 
authority, perhaps the " noblest of all primitive 
races — Maoris, Samoans, Tahitians — may yet be 
saved to fill their place in civilisation." 

Observers generally speak very highly of the 
Polynesians. " Several South Sea Island races 
are not now savage in any sense, except as to 
rarity of trousers and absence of novels, and 
never deserved that epithet in its sense of fero- 
cious. There is no finer people on earth than 
the Tongans and the closely related and but 
slightly less vigorous Samoans. The physical 
beauty of both sexes is paralleled by their in- 
tellectual development. The grace of manner 
and general dignity of bearing habitual with 
members of chiefly families could not be sur- 
passed in the most polished of European Courts. 
The contrast in these respects between the natives 
of high birth and the proselytising and trading 
white men who come to ' civilise ' them cannot 
escape the notice of the least observant. They 
are as passionately attached to their independence 
as the Swiss or the Netherlanders ever were to 
theirs. There is much that is most attractive 
in the kindly communism of the island tribes, 
and not a little that is economically sound. 
When a civilised nation takes over the adminis- 



THE MYSTERIES OF THE ISLES 273 



tration of some group of islands, there is in- 
gratitude as well as impolicy in ignoring the 
fact that the institutions of the natives have 
provided the new Government with a ready-made 
system of poor relief. The question of old-age 
pensions had been settled by the islanders long 
before white men came amongst them. It would 
be interesting to be informed by authorities on 
economics where co-operative agriculture has 
reached a more effective development than it 
has in some South Sea Islands." 1 

There is much of interest in these matters of 
social economy among people whom we have too 
often termed 44 savages " ; and the way in which 
they made use of natural resources, land, water, 
&c, as in the case of the Incas of Peru, is, 
I submit, certainly worthy of study by the indus- 
trial communities of to-day. How some of these 
gentle, courteous little kingships and queenships 
gave place to the blatant dominion of modern 
commercial people brings to my mind the re- 
semblance of poor Queen Liliuokalani of Hawaii 
and her pathetic pilgrimage to the United States. 
I was in San Francisco at the time, and well 
remember the outpourings of the yellow journals 
on the subject. 

The author last quoted says : 44 To even a 
callous heart there must be something shocking 
in the case of the gracious, kindly, and intelli- 
gent Samoans serving as the shuttlecocks of rival 
gangs of money-makers in a hurry to grow rich. 

1 Sir Cyprian Bridge, in his Introduction to u The Caroline 
Islands," Christian, London, 1899. 

18 



274 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



Belisarius begging for an oholus was not a more 
piteous spectacle than Malietoa Laupepa, with 
his seven hundred years of chiefly pedigree, 
accepting a dole of salted pork." 

The foregoing does not pretend to be more 
than a very brief sketch of the black and brown 
people of Oceania, the Melanesians and Poly- 
nesians, sufficient to give an idea of the in- 
habitants of the region where to-day still exist 
the remains of the stone structures we have now 
to observe. There is a great deal of interesting 
literature about the Polynesians, and it is to be 
hoped that even fuller investigations about them 
will be made before they disappear, if such is 
the destiny before them, as prophesied by some 
writers. 

Leaving these considerations, however, we shall 
now visit the various island groups which lie 
between America and Asia, after leaving Easter 
Island. The first, as far as the purpose of this 
book is concerned, is Pitcairn Island, the nearest 
point in Polynesia which we reach, going westward 
from Easter Island some 1,400 miles, and lying 
in latitude 130 0 6' W. Pitcairn Island belongs to 
Great Britain, and is famous in connection with 
the mutineers of the Bounty. It is a beautiful 
island, but rises abruptly from the water with 
steep cliffs of basaltic lava, without coral for- 
mation. It was discovered in 1767. The matters 
of prehistoric interest on the island are chiefly 
in the remains of carved stone pillars or images 
of a somewhat similar character to those of j 
Easter Island, and the same problem remains 



THE MYSTERIES OF THE ISLES 275 



unanswered as to who were their sculpt or s.^ 
Stone axes also are found in the soil, and 
" skeletons with a pearl -mussel beneath the 
head." The people living on the island, 
descendants of the mutineers, Polynesians, and 
others, govern themselves — as a British colony — 
by a Council chosen among themselves. 

Another 1,400 miles to the north-west takes 
us to Tahiti, of the Erench Society Islands, 
1 49 0 30' W., among whose customs and struc- 
tures we might easily halt a while in the 
pursuance of our theme. We read that the 
natives of Tahiti buried their chiefs in the 
temples ; their embalmed bodies, after being 
exposed, were interred in a crouching position. 
Mention is made of a pyramidal stone structure, 
on which were the actual altars, which stood at 
the farther end of one of the squares. In the 
great temple at Atahura the stone structure was 
270 feet long, 94 feet wide, and 50 feet high, 
and its summit was reached by a flight of steps 
built of hewn coral and basalt. " Sacrificial 
offerings, including human sacrifices, formed a 
prominent part of Tahitian worship. The 
images, which are less remarkable than those 
of Hawaii, were rough representations of the 
human form carved in wood." There is a whiff 
of early Mexico about this, its stone altars and 
bloody priestcraft. 

A thousand miles or more to the north of Pit- 
cairn and of Tahiti lie the Marquesas, tropic 
islands far out of the track of the ordinary 
traveller, 



276 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



A recent writer 1 considers that there may have 
been some connection between the people of the 
Marquesas and those of early America, but he 
does not give any particular evidence in support 
of the theory. Some native decorative work per- 
haps seems analogous. He says : " The Mar- 
quesan legends reflect a strange, gloomy cast 
of thought. Many of their rites, costumes, 
dances, and customs would seem to argue an 
intermixture with the red races of America, 
possibly with some of the tribes of Mayapan and 
Yucatan. ... A thorough study of Maori and 
Marquesan tattoo signs might supply a clue to 
the origin of the Hydah carvings of British 
Columbia and Vancouver Island, and even of the 
mysterious writings and sculptures of Palenque 
and Chichen Itza, and thus throw light on the 
annals and histories of the buried cities of 
Yucatan. ... In this connection I will go 
farther still, and remark that in my opinion the 
terraces and statues of Easter Island, the Peru- 
vian buildings of Caxamalca and Titicaca, the 
ruins of Angkor-Thorn in Cambodia, of Bram- 
banam, Boro Bodo, and Modjo-pahit on Java, 
the Passumali monoliths of Sumatra, the great 
island-Venice of Metalanim or Ponape, the 
canals and Cyclopean walls of Lele, and the 
Langi and Druidical Hamonga of Tongatabu, 
may be all, to use a homely expression, ' pieces 
of the same puzzle.' " 

The natives of the Marquesas are a pure 
Polynesian race, usually described as physically 
1 11 Eastern Pacific Islands/' Christian, London, 191 1. 



THE MYSTERIES OF THE ISLES 277 



the finest of all South Sea Islanders. Their 
traditions point to Samoa as the colonising centre 
from which they sprang. Their complexion is a 
healthy bronze. Their houses are unlike those 
usual in Polynesia, in being built on platforms 
raised from the ground. 

At this point it may be well to recollect that 
the " red " race of America, North and South, 
is not " red." The Indians of America are 
brown ; there is no subdivision of mankind really 
which is " red." The Indians of Arizona and 
California, equally with those of Mexico and 
Peru, are not red, and might well be described 
as a " healthy bronze." 

The houses of the people in Hiva-oa, in the 
Marquesas, are curiously built, and are described 
as follows by the last -quoted writer : " We go 
past deserted paepaes, or stone platforms, and 
paepaes as yet undeserted. One remarkable 
native house attracts our attention. The platform 
stands about 7 feet high, with several massive 
blocks of basalt, curiously carved, set into its 
centre as it faces the road. On one of these 
a gigantic fish-hook is sculptured in relief : it 
is the emblem of Tuha, God of Fishes and 
Fisheries. Nowadays the natives build their 
houses somewhat carelessly, but the principle of 
the underlying stone platform remains the same. 
Some of the more ancient paepaes must have 
cost tremendous labour, built as they are of 
dozens and dozens of ponderous basalt blocks 
laid together with the utmost nicety. They built 
mightily in Hiva-Oa of old. I have noted a 



278 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



somewhat similar style of house -building upon 
the island of Ponape, the inhabitants of which 
show indisputable traces of a Polynesian 
mixture." 

It is stated that the upper part of the vale 
is " thickly studded with massive paepae or stone 
platforms, showing clear evidence of the numbers 
and enterprise of the vanished children of the 
soil, whom tradition declares to have been 
the fiercest and most warlike of the clans of the 

island Far up in the valley, near the 

residence of the local queen, is an old sacred 
enclosure, a most interesting relic of a grey 
antiquity, within which, surrounded by a devil 
copse of coffee shrubs, planted of late years, 
stand two giant stone figures, the statues of 
Taka-li and his wife, a monarch of might, when 
the Pahatai, the ' People of the Beach,' were a 
powerful clan, about the time of the great migra- 
tion from Hiva-oa to Tahuata Island by the sons 
of Nuku, some forty generations ago." 1 

In the illustration, from a photograph, given 
in the above work it is stated that the statue is 
about 8 feet in height. Possibly it may be that 
all these rude stone images and idols bear a 
certain resemblance to each other, but there is 
an air about this image which seems reminis- 
cent of the stone figures of Tiahuanako, on the 
Andean highlands of Titicaca. In the Mar- 
quesas we have the same conditions of a decaying 
race as in the Andes. Robert Louis Stevenson 
in his writings draws a mournful picture of the 
1 u Eastern Pacific Islands," ante. 



THE MYSTERIES OF THE ISLES 279 



decay of the Marquesas Islanders, and it is held 
that it is due to the physical and moral retribu- 
tion of cannibalism partly, or mainly, and that 
the profligacy and immorality of the whites have 
also contributed to this decline. 

Upon the ornamentation of the work of these 
people of the Marquesas, as shown on their 
carved coconut and rosewood dishes, is the 
" Greek " pattern, which is reproduced here (see 
page 245), such as is so marked a feature of the 
ruins of Mitla in Mexico, and of ornamentation 
and sculpture in prehistoric stone and textile 
fabric in both Mexico and Peru, as characteristic 
of design in many parts of the world, as men- 
tioned elsewhere. The zigzag lines, also sup- 
posed to represent sea waves in Egyptian hiero- 
glyphics, occur in the Marquesan decoration, as 
well as in Peru and Mexico. Ornamentation 
upon a frontlet of carved turtle-shell, given by 
the writer last quoted, shows the square sculp- 
tured idol form which so easily carries the mind 
back to analogous forms in ancient America and 
Asia. The pahi, or " raft -boat," of Tahiti some- 
what resembles the balsa of Peru, it is said. 

Continuing our westward course for 1,800 
miles from Tahiti, we reach the Tonga or 
Friendly Islands, slightly to the south of Samoa, 
and about 1,000 miles north of New Zealand. 
At Tongatabu, or " Sacred Tonga " — longitude 
about 1 7 5 0 W., the largest of the group — there 
are some ancient stone remains, such as burial- 
places built with great blocks, and a remark- 
able monument consisting of two upright blocks 



280 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



mortised to carry a transverse one, on which 
was formerly a circular basin of stone. These 
great stone blocks must have been brought by 
sea. As we have seen, Samoa, not very far to 
the north of Tongataba, was the principal home 
of the navigating Polynesian people, and Savaii, 
the largest island of the group, the centre from 
which they dispersed over the Pacific, from 
Hawaii to New Zealand. They carried the name 
Savaii in various forms to Tahiti, Hawaii, the 
Marquesas, and New Zealand, did these Samoan 
wanderers . 

Traversing a vast distance from Samoa— 
3,000 miles perhaps— to the north-west, pass- 
ing other groups of islands, we reach the 
Caroline Islands. Here are massive prehistoric 
stone remains, colossal structures which cannot 
have been erected by the present Melanesian or 
Polynesian peoples. They form part of a system 
whose wide diffusion, which extended as far as 
Easter Island, approaching the New World, 
points to the occupation of the Pacific by a 
prehistoric race with considerable pretensions to 
general culture. 

At Lele and Ponape, islets of this group, the 
last named some 2,300 miles from the coast of 
Japan, exist remarkable structures which are a 
puzzle to archaeologists and ethnologists. In the 
islet of Lele there are ruins which present the 
appearance of a citadel with Cyclopean ramparts 
built of large basaltic blocks. There are also 
numerous canals, and w T hat look like artificial 
harbours constructed amid the shallow lagoons. 



THE MYSTERIES OF THE ISLES 281 



In Ponape the remains are of a similar character, 
but on a much larger scale, and different in that 
those of Lele stand all on the land and those of 
Ponape are built in the water. The whole island 
is strewn with natural basaltic prisms, some of 
great size ; and of this material, which must have 
been brought by boats or rafts from a distance 
of 30 miles, are great walls, put together with- 
out any mortar, and sustained only by their own 
weight. All the massive walls and other struc- 
tures on the last side of the island are built of 
these basaltic blocks. The walls of the main 
building near the entrance of Metalanim Har- 
bour form a massive quadrangle 200 feet on 
all sides, with inner courts, vault, and raised 
platforms, with walls 20 feet to 40 feet high 
and 8 feet to 10 feet thick. Some of the blocks 
are 25 feet long and 8 feet in circumference, 
and weigh from 3 to 4 tons. There are also 
numerous canals from 30 feet to 100 feet 
wide, while a large number of islets, mainly 
artificial, covering an area of 9 square miles, 
have all been built up out of the shallow water 
of the lagoon round about the entrance of the 
harbour, with high sea-walls composed of the 
same basaltic prisms. The walls of this " Pacific 
Venice," as this remarkable place has been 
termed, are partly submerged in some places, 
and this has given rise to the idea that the land 
has subsided since these extensive structures were 
built. This, however, is doubtful. But it is 
generally agreed that these structures could not 
possibly have been the work of any existing 



282 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



Polynesian people, and they can only be attri- 
buted to some extinct prehistoric race, doubtless 
the men of the new Stone Age, who emigrated 
from the Asiatic mainland long ago in the dawn 
of history. 1 

These great structures at Ponape are described 
in several books, the most recent being that by 
an author, whose work on the Eastern Pacific 
has been quoted ; 2 and the following is the 
opinion as to their origin by an authority on 
those regions, before quoted, Sir Cyprian Bridge, 
who says :— 3 

" I have ventured to form the opinion that the 
great Ponape and Kusaie ruins are not those of 
buildings erected by the races at present in- 
habiting the islands. Whether the ancestors of 
the present Ponapeans or an earlier people built 
the great island-Venice at Metalanim, it will not, 
I expect, be denied that the builders must have 
vastly outnumbered the existing population. The 
same may be said of every Pacific island on which 
prehistoric remains are found. A tradition of a 
larger population in early times is very common 
in the South Seas, and there is evidence beyond 
that supplied by the ruins to support it." 

Other islands of the Caroline group are of 

interest as regards these ancient stone structures. 

The island of Yap, surrounded by a coral reef 

thirty-five miles long, " is full of relics of a 

vanished civilisation — embankments and terraces, 

sites of ancient cultivation, and solid roads 

1 See article in Encyc. Brit. 2 Christian. 

3 Sir Cyprian Bridge, in Christian's "The Caroline Islands." 



THE MYSTERIES OF THE ISLES 283 



neatly paved with regular stone blocks, ancient 
stone platforms and graves, and enormous 
council lodges of quaint design. Inland are 
extensive swamps laid out in plantations of a 
water taro, the Colocasia of the Nile Valley." 1 
The " stone money " of Yap, huge calcite disks 
6 to 12 feet in diameter and weighing up to 
five tons, are a remarkable feature. They are 
quarried in the Pelew Islands two hundred miles 
to the south, but those which existed before the 
advent of Europeans must have been brought in 
native vessels or rafts. 2 

In Ruk and Hogolu, other small islands of 
this group, the inhabitants of the coast are 
described as of a light reddish-brown, and one 
of the curious customs of these people is that of 
" piercing the lower lobe of the ear and hanging 
a heavy ornament therein, causing it to expand 
downwards to an enormous size — a custom 
observed also in the Visayas of the Southern 
Philippines, among the ancient Incas of Peru, 
and the Polynesians of Easter Island." 3 This 
was a noteworthy custom in early Peru, and is 
kept up to-day by one of the forest tribes of the 
Peruvian Amazon region, the Orejones, who were 
in close contact with the Incas .4 I have given 
an illustration of this in my book on Peru. The 
same custom prevails among one of the tribes 
of Central Africa. 5 

1 Christian, ante. 2 Encyc. Brit. 

3 Christian, " The Caroline Islands." 

♦ " Peru," London, 1909. 

5 See illustrations in Geographical Journal, 



284 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



The description given by Christian of the 
Ponape and other remains is of much interest, 
and according to his view there are matters in 
connection with these works and the inhabitants 
which are analogous with the early Peruvians. 
" Villages, valleys, hills, and streams have their 
genius loci, and the Ponapeans, like the 
Quechuas, people their swamps, mountains, and 
forests with spirits — gloomy, malignant, or bene- 
ficent. " All these am are honoured under the 
guise of some special bird, fish, or tree, in which 
they are supposed to reside, which they style 
their Tan-waar, literally canoe, vehicle, or 
medium (like the Vaa or Vaka of the Poly- 
nesians, the Huaca or Vaka of the Peruvians). 
In their mythology they also have a subterranean 
Tartarus — a gloomy conception very much 
resembling the Yomi of Japan and the Yama of 
the early Vedas." It may be worth while to 
recollect here the canoe-shaped houses mentioned 
on Easter Island in this connection. 

The above-named writer describes the " Pacific 
Venice " : — 

" Ancient platforms and tetragonal enclosures 
of stonework, a wonder of tortuous alley-ways, 
a labyrinth of shallow canals, grim masses of 
stonework peer out from behind verdant screens, 
and passing the southern barricade of stones we 
turned into the ghostly labyrinth of this city of 
the waters, and straightway the merriment of 
our guides was hushed and conversation died 
down to whispers. We are close to Nan-Tanach 
(the place of lofty walls), the most remarkable 



THE MYSTERIES OF THE ISLES 285 



of all the Metalanim ruins. The water-front 
is faced with a terrace built of massive basalt 
blocks about 7 feet wide, standing out more than 
6 feet above the shallow waterway. Above us 
we see a striking example of immensely solid 
Cyclopean stonework frowning down upon the 
waterway, a mighty wall formed of basaltic 
prisms, for it is now low tide in this strange 
water-town. The left side of the great gateway 
yawning overhead is about 25 feet in height 
and the right some 30 feet. In olden times the 
outer wall must have been uniformly of consider- 
ably greater height, but has now in several places 
fallen to ruin. Somewhat similar in character 
would be the semi -Indian ruins of Java, and the 
Cyclopean structures of Ake, and Chichen-Itza 
in Yucatan. A series of huge steps brings us 
into a spacious courtyard, strewn w T ith fragments 
of fallen pillars, encircling a second terraced en- 
closure with a projecting freize or cornice of 
somewhat Japanese type. The outer enclosure 
measured some 1 8 5 feet by 115 feet, the average 
thickness of the outer wall was 1 5 feet, vary- 
ing from 20 to 40 feet in height. In the inner 
terraced enclosure lies the great central vault 
or treasure-chamber identified with the name of 
an ancient monarch known as Chau-te-reul or 
Chau-te-leur. Chau was the ancient Ponape 
word denoting (a) the sun, (b) a king. The 
latter signification tallies with the Rotuma Sau, 
a king, and the Polynesian Hau and Au, a king, 
chief." 

In the above -quoted work the only photo- 



286 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



graphic views given are of walls formed of 
basaltic prisms, without apparently any shaping 
or sculpture, and it is difficult to see what simi- 
larity they could present with the Chichen-Itza 
in Yucatan, with their beautifully sculptured and 
elaborated fagades. It is perhaps worthy of 
mention that the word chau, Ponape for sun, 
might seem to have some analogy with Pun- 
chou, meaning sun, also " god," I believe, in the 
Quechua language of Peru, as mentioned else- 
where. 1 Tao-Te was one of the early Mexican 
names for God, and has been likened to the 
" Tao " of China and the " Tua " of the South Sea 
Islands. We have it in Teotihuacan, the sacred 
city of the Toltecs ; also the Taos of Ecuador. 

It is explained that " Chau-te-leur is the 
name of an ancient king or dynasty of kings 
in Metalanim, when Ponape was under one rule, 
and the great walls of Nan-Tanach, the break- 
water of Nan-Moluchai, and the sanctuary of 
Pan-Katara, and the walled islets near Tomun 
were built by the divine twin brethren — the archi- 
tects Olo-Sipa and Olo-Sopa. The last of them, 
defeated in battle by barbarian hordes from the 
south, under Icho-Kalakal, perished in the waters 
of the Chapalap River, near the great harbour 
and was turned into a blue fish, the kital, which 
to-day is a taboo fish." 

The suggestion is also made that the great 
basaltic blocks for the above described structure 
were put in place by means of an inclined plane, a 
slope of tree trunks sluiced with coconut-oil, and 
1 See p. 240. 



288 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



that they were rafted from the north coast of the 
island. Ropes made of green hibiscus bark and 
solid staves and handspikes with relays of work- 
men may have hoisted the masses up to the 
suggested plane. Among the articles found by 
digging were circular rose-pink beads, minute 
and delicate in design, formed of shells rubbed 
down, and " answering exactly to the wampum 
or shell bead money of the North American 
Indians. Beads exactly similar in design have 
recently been discovered in the ruins of Mitla, 
in Central America." 

Massive sea-walls and breakwaters are 
features, as before mentioned, of these struc- 
tures. " Out in the lagoon off the harbour mouth 
the magnitude of the task of the early builders 
impressed us deeply. For three miles down to 
the south 1 one can descry here and there the 
massive sea-walls showing out through the man- 
grove clumps which girdle the islets of Karrian, 
Likop, Kapinet, and others. There are over fifty 
walled islets which, together with the intersecting 
canals, occupy some eleven square miles." An 
ancient native fortress is described, terraces and 
a pyramid with a great lodge on its summit, 
platform " very much like one of the Mexican 
teocalli or truncated pyramids." 

On the textile fabrics depicted of these people 
appear patterns which seem to bear some simi- 
larity to some of Mexico and Peru, and their 
weavers appear to be as dexterous in their 
weaving with leaf and banana fibres as the 
1 Christian, ante. See plan. 



THE MYSTERIES OF THE ISLES 289 



natives of Ecuador and Peru are in the so-called 
Panama hats and the ponchos of vicuna wool. 

The ruins of Lele are described as far rougher 
and ruder in design than those of the east coast 
of Ponape, " but the great walls and enclosures, 
gateways, and canals attest the enormous work 
performed by these unknown Titans. Some of 
the stones are 10 feet long, 4 feet deep, and 
3 feet thick." The structures are overgrown, 
and in many places the canals have been filled 
up by the natives in recent times. 

M At Painu we launched a canoe and soon 
found ourselves across close inshore to Nanta- 
marui. Cautiously poling over the flats and 
through the narrow channels in the salt-water 
brush, we reached Nantiati just as the moon 
rose over a wild, picturesque scene, lighting up 
league upon league of hill and valley, the forest- 
line trending downwards until lost in the dark 
and eerie zone of mangroves which rustle around 
us, dipping their long forked root-sprays into 
the muddy water like the claws of famished 
spectres groping for their prey. Outside the hut 
is a pile of enormous basalt slabs like a heap of 
colossal ninepins shadowing the still canal in the 
silvery moonlight. The most striking prism of 
all measures 12 feet in length. It has six sides 
or faces, each measuring 3 feet. One end seems 
to have been rudely chipped into the semblance 
of a human head. Another ponderous mass 
almost as long is resting upon the top of the 
rugged blocks, for all the world like a giant 
club, by the waterside. It recalls the huge frag- 

19 



290 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



ment topping the pile of half -submerged blocks 
near the Nan-Moluchai breakwater. At sea 
again, about midnight, we are once more in the 
heart of Nan-Matal, threading the labyrinth of 
narrow canals intersecting the rows of walled 
islets of the water town. We pass Peikap, 
Chaok, Tapan, and Nan-Pulok, catching stray 
glimpses of massive masonry looming up, dark 
and imposing, behind the waving screen of 
jungle, a vivid contrast of shifting lights and 
shadows." 

From the Caroline we travel a thousand miles, 
more or less, to the north-west, towards the coast 
of Japan, and reach the Marianas or Ladrones 
Islands. Here we encounter further remains of 
the pre-historic wall-building people, especially 
in the Island of Tinian. Among these remains 
are two rows of massive, square, stone columns, 
about 5 feet 4 inches broad and 14 feet high, 
having heavy round capitals . According to early 
Spanish accounts cinerary urns were found em- 
bedded in these capitals. No complete explana- 
tion of the existence of these remains has yet 
been forthcoming, and they are wrapped in the 
same mystery that surrounds Easter Island and 
the others which have been described. 

The author before quoted speaks of the small 
pyramids and truncated cones, on the top of 
which are placed half -spherical bodies, which are 
encountered in the islands of the Mariannes, 
especially in Guahan, Saipan, and Tinian. They 
vary from 3 feet to 13 feet in height, and were 
used as burial-places or cairns. On Tinian 



THE MYSTERIES OF THE ISLES 291 



Island they are described as facing each other 
in two parallel lines like a regular street. One 
had upon its summit a semi-esfera or half- 
spherical body two and a half metres in diameter, 
and one a large bowl about 5 feet in depth. 
The pyramids are of rubble cemented with 
mortar, formed of burnt coral and sand. 

Whether the problem involved in the origin 
of the remains of these various groups of islands 
will ever be solved it is difficult to say. Most of 
them, of course, are very remote, and compara- 
tively few scientific travellers visit them. 
Systematic investigation of such matters is 
beyond the reach of the ordinary purse, and it 
would seem that at present there is a lack of those 
men who combine a love of archaeological re- 
search with considerable wealth, who would under- 
take the equipping of expeditions to these distant 
places. Surely these great ethnological puzzles 
would give way before the combined attack of 
brains and money. But have we to-day in- 
vestigators of the type of Humboldt, who could 
combine his world-covering energy and know- 
ledge with a sufficiency of means? 



I 



CHAPTER XVI 



THE LOST CONTINENT 

A Pacific " Atlantis " — India and Java — Early Malaysians — - 
Early Polynesians — Strange voyages — Connection with 
Peru and Mexico — Timor — Delhi — Tasmania — The 
Malay Archipelago — "Out of the sea"- — A wide-scattered 
people — Malay sailors — Hindu ruins in Java — Bou Budur 
— Indian influence — Angkor Thorn — The Khmers of 
Cambodia — Astonishing ancient temple and ruins — 
Brama faces — The Ainos of Japan — The hot-pot of Asia 
— The Mongolian in America — Kublai Khan — Mongolia 
— Tibet and Peru — The Veddahs of Ceylon — Australia's 
part in the secret — Caucasian fragments — Mankind's vast 
antiquity — Ancient land connections — Elevation and 
subsidences of Pacific shores — Japan — The Andes — 
Markham's theory — The Funafuti borings — Darwin and 
Murray — The " subsidence" theory — The new Stone Age 
— The inexplicable problem— Change of the earth's axis. 

More like the evanescent adventures and 
palaces of fairy tales than things of the realm 
of actuality are these migrations and habitations 
of the bygone peoples of the Pacific Isles. 

The question of how those early folk arrived 
thither, how they built such stupendous struc- 
tures in such small places, and why they did 
so is not entirely satisfied by the history and 
traditions of migrations by sea, movements 

292 



THE LOST CONTINENT 293 

whose beginnings were in that remarkable region 
of Malaysia after one of those remote periods 
when Asia " boiled over," as it has done in the 
past and doubtless will do in the future. Is 
there, in addition, any other solution or supple- 
mentary proposition ? 

It has been thought by some students that a 
continent formerly existed in the Pacific — a sort 
of Pacific Atlantis — which subsided, leaving only 
island-peaks to mark its place. 1 Upon this matter 
we shall dwell subsequently, but first it is neces- 
sary to consider further the early migration of 
those people who inhabit these regions. 

According to one writer, the Chinese ( Fu- 
ll i en) visited Java in the fourth or fifth century 
B.C., and it is known that from the first century 
of the Christian era there were migrations of 
people from India. " The Javanese Babads tell 
of an Indian prince who came to Java about 
78 or 120 A.D., where he found a nomadic 
people. Chinese infiltration probably began long 
after 220 B.C. Arabian traders voyaged to the 
East Indian Archipelago long before the time 
of Mohammed. A mixture of Proto-Malayans 
with Indonesians, whom we may call Proto-Poly- 
; nesians, drifted into the West Pacific, and gave to 
the black, woolly-haired natives their language 
and some elements of higher culture, the 
resultant mixed people being the Melanesians. 
Later migrations fared farther into the Pacific, 
and the Samoan Islands appear to have been their 
first centre of dispersal within the Pacific ; later 
1 Fritson, u Globus/' 1907, quoted by Haddon, ante. 



294 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



Tahiti and Raratonga were starting-points for 
fresh discoveries. It is believed 1 that the parent 
stock of the Polynesians can be traced to India 
about 450 B.C. and that a migration took place 
to Java in 65 B.C. In 600 A.D. Polynesians were 
living in Tonga -nui and Samoa. Hawaii was 
first settled in 650 and the Marquesas was prob- 
ably occupied twenty-five years later. In 850 
New Zealand was visited and definitely occupied 
in 1350. " Some idea of the enterprise of these 
remarkable navigators in their sailing canoes may 
be gathered from the fact that, inspired by the 
voyage of Ui-te-rangiora to the Antarctic Seas 
in 650, Te Aru-tanganuku three hundred years 
later sailed in search of the wonders of the deep. 
He reached the land of snow and described ice- 
bergs, sea-elephants, and the large ponds of the 
bull-kelp. Even the remote Easter Island was 
colonised, but there is no evidence that Poly- 
nesians reached the coast of America," says a 
recent authority. 2 

The matter of Polynesian influence in Mexico 
or Peru is one which has been debated, and 
were it possible to establish its truth, a link would 
be created between Asia and America indeed. 
It is the opinion of Dr. Alfred Wallace that a 
stream of migration from East tropical Asia, 
where the Veddahs of Ceylon, the early Temple- 
builders of Cambodia, and the Ainos of Japan, 

1 Smith, " Hawaiki : the Original Home of the Maori," 
1904. 

2 "The Wanderings of Peoples,'' Haddon, 1911, from 
which the above passage is abstracted. 



THE LOST CONTINENT 



295 



forming remnants of the Caucasian races, which 
emigrants in conjunction with Malay tribes pro- 
duced the Mahoris of Samoa, Hawaii, and New 
Zealand, reached South America and were the 
origin of the Incas of Peru. 1 Further proofs of 
these migrations might solve, to a great extent, 
the Secret of the Pacific. 

Timor, " the island of the Malay Archipelago," 
some 500 miles to the north-west of Port Darwin, 
in the northern territory of Australia, merits here 
a word of mention. The inhabitants are 
Papuans, much mixed with Malayan and perhaps 
Polynesian elements, and are described as a fine 
race over six feet tall, noted for their artistic 
sense. Of this island an author quoted before 
says : " Timor was anciently an important point 
in the migrations of the Malayan race, in whose 
calendar Timor is still preserved to denote the 
East Quarter, side by side with the more modern 
term ' Masrak ' (Arabic Mashrik). As varia- 
tions of the ancient Malayan geographical name 
denote different points of the compass, so we 
may safely take Timor to have been one of the 
early homes of the Malayo-Polynesian, ere they 
dispersed themselves, wave upon wave, flotilla 
upon flotilla, on their long ocean wanderings. 
The little town Dilli is the Malayan form of 
Delhi, wondrous city of palaces, one of the 
numerous Sanscrit place-names which have come 
floating down into Malayan on untold waves of 
migration." 2 

1 In a letter to me, already quoted. 

2 Christian, "The Caroline Islands." 



296 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



The black, woolly-haired races, as already 
described, were the first inhabitants of the Malay 
Archipelago, which doubtless has been divided 
into islands during the human period. The 
recently extinct Tasmanians were of this race, 
the ground-stock of the Melanesians — people who 
" walked from New Guinea to Tasmania." 1 This 
was, as a glance at the map will show, a long 
"walk." 

The Malayans themselves, the dominant race 
of the Malay Peninsula and of the Malay Archi- 
pelago, are of mysterious origin. Though in 
their lands this brown race have enjoyed for 
a thousand years the position of the dominant 
people, they all possess a tradition that they are 
not indigenous and that their first rulers " came 
out of the sea," and it has been shown that they 
possessed a certain amount of civilisation before 
ever they set foot in Malaya. Until recently 
eminent scientists held the opinion that they 
were of Mongol stock, and resemblance was 
noted between the Malay and Mongol physical 
characteristics, 2 but a more generally accepted 
theory is that the Malayan race is distinct and 
came from the South, until it was stayed by the 
Mongolian race living on the mainland of 
Southern Asia. Their language, crania -measure- 
ments, and hair, moreover, are distinct from the 
Mongolian races. The theory is now supported 
that they form a distinct race, and had their 
original home in the South. Where that home 

1 Haddon, " The Wanderings of People." 

2 Dr. Wallace, " Malay Archipelago." 



THE LOST CONTINENT 



297 



lay it is not easy to say, but the facts recorded 
by many writers as to the resemblance between 
the Malayan and Polynesian races, and the strong 
Malayan element found in the Polynesian lan- 
guages, have led some students to think that the 
two races may have had a common origin. One 
writer attributed the fact of linguistic analogies 
to the casting away of ships manned by Malays 
upon the islands of the Polynesian Archipelago, 
but this does not satisfactorily account for the 
same Malayan words appearing in localities so 
widely separated as they are, and the theory is 
more generally held that the two races are allied, 
and may at some remote period of history have 
shared a common home. " It has been suggested 
that their separation did not take place until 
after the continent which once existed in the 
North Pacific had become submerged." 1 

Thus it has ever been conjectured that there 
existed some shadowy continent in the North 
Pacific, which has disappeared beneath the 
waters, and that separation of those races 
took place at that time, the Malays wander- 
ing northwards, whilst the Polynesian race 
spread itself over the islands of the southern 
archipelago. This, although admittedly a specu- 
lative view, is the most recent upon the subject. 
In any case the Malays are, now a race scattered 
widely and without political coherence, con- 
ditions which are one of the puzzles of the 
ethnographer, and which time must solve. 



1 See Encyc. Brit., " Malays/' 



298 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



The present home of these people is in the 
extremity of the Malay Peninsula, the islands 
of Java, Sumatra, and Borneo, and others of 
the Malay Archipelago, and, still farther afield, 
the Philippines and Madagascar. Even the in- 
habitants of most of the South Sea Islands, 
whether Hawaii or New Zealand, speak 
languages showing Malay influence in the past. 
It has been adduced from this that the Malays 
have not now a continental character, but that 
by nature or circumstance they are " a seafaring 
race with singular powers of dispersal, which 
has caused them to spread over the ocean from 
some island centre, perhaps Java." The great 
number of Malays as sailors on British ships 
is a witness to the seafaring tendency of these 
people. It has also been advanced as a recent 
theory that the stream of migration proceeded 
from the extreme West, of which a g'reat lin- 
guistic group, which included the Malay, Poly- 
neasian, and Micronesian languages and some 
others furnished the source. 

These considerations about the Malays have 
brought us to Asia, but only very briefly can we 
enter upon the complicated and shadowy move- 
ments which concern us here, movements which 
have already been touched upon. 

In the history of the Asiatic Malays three 
periods have been considered by the ethnologists : 
the first included that of the semi-barbarous 
Dyaks, the second that of a Hindu civilisation 
which penetrated the Malay Peninsula and 
reached Java and Sumatra and other islands. 



THE LOST CONTINENT 299 

This was superseded by Islam in the beginning 
of the fifteenth century. 

The Hindu civilisation left some astonishing 
ruins in Java, numerous and splendid temples 
and monastic buildings, chief among them the 
famous Boro-Budur. These ruins would require 
and, indeed, have a literature to themselves, and 
we shall not enter upon them here. It has been 
stated that if the statues and bas-reliefs of the 
hill or temple of Boro-Budur were placed side 
by side they would extend for three miles. This 
type of architecture is a type which reached a 
high standard without the use of mortar, and 
in that respect reminds us of early America. 

The sphere of Indian influence is a vast one, 
including Indo -China, much of the Malay Penin- 
sula, Tibet, and Mongolia. Much of the origin 
of its art is stated to be Greek, " derived from 
the Perso-Greek States on the north-west fron- 
tiers of India." Indian alphabets have spread to 
Tibet, Cambodia, Java, and Korea, notwithstand- 
ing the chapters afforded by the huge ruins. The 
history of Indian civilisation in Indo -China and 
the archipelago remains obscure. As to Cam- 
bodia this formed the relatively ancient Khmer 
Kingdom, much reduced in the last few centuries. 
The remarkable ruins, dating possibly from 
a.d. 800 to 1000, show, as in Java, the earlier 
powerful existence of Hindu influence. Most 
notable are the royal city of Angkor-Thorn, 
which was completed about a.d. 900, and the 
temple of Angkor Vat, in the first half of the 
twelth century A.D. These ruins are situated 



300 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



in forests on the banks of the river : walls, 
palaces, temples, terraces, pyramidal religious 
structures, magnificent reliefs, elaborate system 
of galleries, the last rectangular in the arrange- 
ment and enclosing a cruciform structure, at the 
centre of which rises a huge tower with a circular 
base, and at intervals are fifty towers, decorated 
with quadruple faces of Brahma — such are some 
of the features of Angkor -Thorn. Angkor Val 
is the best preserved example of Khmer archi- 
tecture, with a paved causeway leading under 
a magnificent portico, staircases, sanctuaries, 
towers, galleries, representations of gods, men, 
and animals on every flat surface. The stone 
was cut into huge blocks — principally sandstone 
— fitted together without cement, like those of 
Java. The ancient civilisation of the Khmers was 
destroyed about six hundred years ago, but its 
astonishing ruins were only made known to 
Europe in 1858. Hundreds of gigantic faces of 
Brahma are the characteristic features of the great 
temple of Baion, whose interior walls contain 
nearly eleven thousand figures of men and 
animals. The temple, according to native 
history, was built in 250 B.C. and the people 
who built also made " great lines of roads equal 
to those of the Romans." For more than two 
thousand years there was then, in the south- 
eastern peninsula of Asia, a dense population of 
various races, ruled over by a highly civilised 
superior race of undoubted Caucasian type, and 
the Khmers who still exist amid these surround- 
ings are high above any people of the Mongol 
race. 



THE LOST CONTINENT 301 



In Dr. Wallace's book, 1 from which some of 
the above particulars are taken, there are photo- 
graphic reproductions of these marvellous build- 
ings, which are of great interest. As has been 
shown, Dr. Wallace maintains that these early 
temple-builders of Cambodia, intermixed with 
others, produced the fine Mahori race, whose off- 
shoots reached South America and were the 
origin of the Incas of Peru and Bolivia. Full 
of allurement are these mysterious problems of 
the past. 

As is the case of the Cambodians so is that 
of the Ainos of Japan, as having formed part 
of the human material whose immigrating off- 
shoots reached America, according to the same 
authority. These, the aborigines of Northern 
Asia, do not provide any material for their 
history, although there is some record of the 
migration of later races superimposed upon 
them. " The Chinese came from the west, 
though how far west is unknown. The Hindus 
and Persians came from the north-west, the 
Burmese and Siamese from the north. We do 
not know if the Mongols, Turks, &c, had any 
earlier home than Central Asia, but their exten- 
sive movements from that region are historical. 
The antiquity of Asiatic history is often exag- 
gerated. With the exception of Babylonia and 
Assyria, we can hardly even conjecture what was 
the condition of this continent much before 
1500 B.C. The advancing Chinese and Aryans 
were in conflict with earlier races. The influ- 
1 " Studies Scientific and Social," vol. i. 



302 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



ence of Babylonian civilisation was probably 
widespread. Some connection between Babylo- 
nia and China is generally admitted. China has 
moulded the civilisation of the eastern mainland 
and Japan, without much affecting the Malay- 
archipelago. In its outer sphere of influence are 
Mongolia, Tibet, Siam, Cambodia, and Burma, 
where Indian and Chinese influences are com- 
bined, the Indian being often the stronger. The 
distribution of the Mongolian group in Asia 
offers no particular difficulty. There is complete 
present, and probably previous, long-existing 
geographical continuity in the area over which 
they are found, with considerable similarity of 
climate and other conditions throughout the 
northern half of Asia which they occupy. The 
extension of modified forms of the Mongolian 
type over the whole of the American continent 
may be mentioned as a remarkable circumstance 
connected with this branch of the human race." 

" The relation to Asia of the pre-European 
civilisations of America is one of those questions 
which admit of no definite answer at present, 
though many facts support the theory that the 
semi-civilised inhabitants of Mexico and Central 
America crossed from Asia by Behring Straits 
and descended the West Coast." 

The foregoing passage, abstracted from the 
article on Asia in the new edition of the Encyclo- 
paedia Britannica, is of extreme interest as show- 
ing the most recent thought upon the Asiatic 
influence in America in pre-Columbian times, 
and certainly may be taken as combating the 



THE LOST CONTINENT 303 



negative opinions of last century, some of which 
I have quoted in this book. 

The word Mongolia conveys perhaps to the 
ordinary reader but a vague impression, and 
nothing but a study of the map of Asia can 
give a clear idea of the extent and position of 
the country. The Mongols were those formid- 
able nomads who swarmed over Central Asia, 
China, India, and Europe, and performed such 
astonishing conquests from the beginning of 
their known history in 619 A.D. A dependency 
of China, it has an area of 1,350,000 square 
miles, and about 3,000,000 people, but, due to 
the possible disruption of China, it seems that a 
further change in its fortunes will occur. It is 
divided geographically by the huge desert of 
Gobi, largely unexplored. In the thirteenth 
century the Mongol power under Kublai Khan 
conquered China. The possibility of an influence 
upon Peru has been discussed elsewhere. The 
Mongol dynasty in China lasted less than a 
century, but the Ming, the native Chinese dynasty 
which succeeded it, reigned for nearly three hun- 
dred years and sent out expeditions — as Kublai 
Khan had done — to remote regions, including 
India, Ceylon, and East Africa. The Manchus 
followed from 1644 to 191 1, and it was on the 
i 29th of December, 191 1, the overthrow of this 
and the election of China's first president of a 
republic was announced. 

The illustrations given in this book of natives 
of the Quechua districts of Peru, may, as before 
mentioned, be compared with the Tibetan and 



304 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



Mongolian faces. Wanderers from Tibet might, 
indeed, have felt at home in Peru, with its remote 
towns on lofty plateaux, in the heart of snowy 
mountains : a land so similar to their own. Is it 
possible that the opening up of the great unknown 
regions of Asia, and study of its desert cities and 
ancient manuscripts will yield some clue towards 
the solution of the Secret of the Pacific ? 1 

To turn from Asia now, for a brief glance at 
Australasia. There are in many parts of Southern 
Asia semi-barbarous races who represent the 
very earliest types of mankind, as far as known, 
such as the Veddahs of Ceylon and other tribes 
in China and Malaysia ; and some of these are 
analogous, it is held, in some respects with the 
Australians — a connection which, if it really 
existed, must be of so remote a period as 
that when land communication was very 
different. In discussing the probable origin of 
the Australian race Dr. Wallace says that the 
aborigines of Australia differ remarkably from 
those of all surrounding countries, while they 
agree so closely among themselves in every part 
of the continent that they evidently form a single 
race. Although their features are coarse they 
are far less so than in the negro races. In colour 
they are a deep copper or chocolate, never sooty 

1 Perhaps something in this connection may be hoped for 
from the researches of Dr. Aurel Stein, whose book " Ruins 
of Desert Cathay " has been published, and in which are 
mentioned twenty-nine cases of manuscript and objects 
of Graeco-Buddhist and other art, from a chapel walled 
up for 900 years, brought home by him to the British 
Museum. 



THE LOST CONTINENT 



305 



black as in the negro ; hair long, glossy, black 
or very deep auburn, wavy or curly, luxurious 
moustache, beard, whiskers, usually of an auburn 
tinge. These characters give to the face a 
familiar appearance, resembling the coarser and 
more sensual types of Western Europeans, whilst 
they are totally removed from any of the beard- 
less Malayan and Polynesian tribes or the woolly 
Papuans. If we turn to habits and customs for 
some light as to their probable derivation, we 
must go far beyond the limits of all surround- 
ing people. Analogy has been drawn between 
customs which are common to Australia and 
Africa. More interesting is the fact that the 
peculiar Australian weapon, the boomerang, finds 
its nearest representative in Abyssinia and among 
the ancient Egyptians. This may indicate that 
the weapon had a wider range in early times, 
but can hardly be held to prove identity of race. 
Considered broadly, and without prejudice, the 
Australians belong neither to the Negroid nor to 
the Mongoloid types of man, while in all essential 
characters they must be classed as Caucasians. 
If we look abroad for other isolated fragments 
of the same type, we find one in the Ainos of 
Japan. These singular people agree wonderfully 
with the Australian type, but are somewhat more 
hairy and of a lighter colour. They are also in 
a more advanced stage of material civilisation, 
and are probably on a somewhat higher intel- 
lectual and moral plane. 

Other fragments of the same great primitive 
race exist in the Khmers and Chams of Cam- 

20 



306 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



bodia, who are said to be decidedly Caucasian 
in type, while their language has affinities with 
those of Polynesia, where also Caucasian affinities 
are shown, especially in some of the inhabitants 
of Micronesia. Of all these widely scattered 
Caucasian fragments we must look upon the 
Australians as the lowest. Their antiquity, in 
all probability, is very great, since they must 
have entered their present country at a time 
when their ancestors had not acquired the arts 
of making pottery, houses, bows and arrows, of 
tilling the soil and domesticating animals. 1 

The same author describes the remarkable 
cave -paintings and sculptures found by Sir 
George Grey in the valley of the Glenelg River 
in North-West Australia — life-size figures in 
blue, red, and yellow, some with a head-dress 
or halo, and letters and characters having an 
Oriental aspect ; also a sculptured human head 
about 2 feet in length, the singularity of which 
is that it is perfectly European in type. On 
Chasm Island are other figures, and two large 
square mounds formed of loose stones, but 
perfect parallelograms in outline, placed due east 
and west. It is possible that converts of the 
early Jesuit missionaries may have been wrecked 
on this coast and executed these works, but 
whoever it was certainly they were not done by 
the aboriginal Australian. 

The conclusion reached is that the Australians 
are really of Caucasian origin, and this accords 

1 u Australasia," Wallace, Stanford's "Compendium of 
Geography and Travel," 1893. 



THE LOST CONTINENT 307 



with all the facts of the case ; and since it has 
been admitted that even some of the darkest 
Hindoos are nearly allied to Europeans, there 
is less improbability in the existence of some 
more archaic and less developed examples of 
the same type. 

"It also accords with all we are now learning 
of the vast antiquity of the human race, since if 
all the tribes now living can be classed in one 
or other of the three great divisions of mankind, 
Negroid, Mongolian, and Caucasian, or as 
probable mixtures of them, we are impressed 
with the conviction that we must go back to 
periods to which the earliest historical dates are 
but as yesterday in order to arrive at an epoch 
when the common ancestors of these three well- 
marked types alone inhabited the earth. Even 
then we shall have made no perceptible approach 
to the 1 missing link ' — to the common ancestors 
of man and the higher quadrumana." 1 

Such are, then, some of the currents and 
cross-currents in the movements of mankind in 
these vast regions, of which the present work 
has endeavoured, even if in a fragmentary way, 
to remind the reader, hoping that he will go 
to the real fountain-heads of knowledge on the 
subject, from which this fragmentary resume is 
compiled. It remains to consider, briefly, the 
changes on land and water that have occurred 
in the regions here concerned, where the possi- 
bilities of some ancient universal culture may 
have been responsible for the strange monuments 
1 Wallace, ante. 



308 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



we have considered— some lost Pacific and 
Atlantic continents : a matter which has been 
touched upon in an early chapter. 

Science is still divided as to the earlier 
arrangement of land and water in many parts 
of the globe. Geology shows that parts of 
what are now continents formed, long ago in 
the earth's history, portions of the bed of the 
ocean, while what are now islands were in some 
instances connected with their adjacent main- 
lands. They were even joined as land masses, 
the sites of which are now occupied by the open 
sea. Thus there may have been land connec- 
tion between Australasia and South America, and 
between South America and Africa — North Brazil 
and North Africa. North and South America 
were formerly disunited, during the greater part 
of the Tertiary period until the later Miocene or 
Pliocene period, at some epoch of which a con- 
nection was established between the twin conti- 
nents by way of the Isthmus of Darien, and 
northern animals passed over this land-bridge, 
from North America, including, probably, llamas, 
horses, mastodons, and perhaps opossums, at that 
time of zoological distribution. Of course, the 
horse, mastodon, and opossum disappeared from 
America, whilst the llama, the hoofed ruminating 
quadruped of the humpless camel tribe, is found 
nowhere except in Peru and Bolivia to-day. But, 
as it has been well said, " we must not construct 
bridges without being sure of our points of 
attachment," at least as regards the South 
America-Africa connection. It has also been 



THE LOST CONTINENT 309 



said that camels and horses may have origin- 
ated in the New World, but there seems at 
least an equal probability that Central Asia — or 
a land common to Asia and America — may 
have been their birthplace. " In pre -Tertiary 
times — probably cretaceous — Australia was united 
by land with Asia. The connection of Australia 
and South America by means of a mid-Pacific 
continent may have existed, and the early 
Tertiary Atlantic ' Hellenis ' may have been in 
contact with Guiana on the one side and tropical 
Africa on the other." 

If, however, such land connections existed only 
before man appeared, and these subsidences took 
place in the Tertiary period before the dawn 
of human life, they are not factors which can 
solve the present problem. Some authorities 
maintain that there have not been any particular 
changes in the bed of the open Pacific since 
the Palaeozoic era, nor that any particular part 
of the huge space over which the waters of the 
Pacific flow to-day has ever been uncovered, 
that both as regards elevation above sea -level 
and depression below it no great change has 
occurred. 

Probably, however, more is yet to be learned 
on this point. It is known from careful observa- 
tion that the east coast of Japan is slowly rising, 
and trustworthy maps show that Tokio Bay ex- 
tended much more deeply to the north in the 
eleventh century than now, and that low-lying, 
districts, thickly populated to-day, were formerly 
under water. Similar phenomena have been laid 



310 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



bare in other parts of the country. Asakusa — 
named from an edible seaweed, which fact gave 
rise to the discovery of its altered position in 
regard to tide-water — is now three miles inland. 
The mountain country of Kasusa-Awa " emerged 
from Tokio Bay as an island, and a current ran 
in a north-westerly direction between this island 
and the northern mountain margin of the present 
plain towards the north-east into the open 
ocean." 1 

When we come to the other side — the 
American side— of the Pacific basin we find 
that very marked changes of elevation have 
occurred, and possibly within the human period. 
It is known that portions of the Andes and the 
North American Cordillera have been raised and 
that other parts have sunk. It is even con- 
jectured that the highland region of Peru and 
Bolivia may have been elevated since the build- 
ing of the megalithic structures of the pre-Inca 
people ; and one of the arguments adduced is 
that these buildings exist in a region where 
now timber does not grow and where maize 
will not ripen. An interesting paper upon Peru, 
recently given by one of the most eminent 
authorities on the subject before the Royal 
Geographical Society, 2 dealt with the matter in 
some detail, and the question raised again of 
how a site for a city of the considerable 
importance which the ruins of Tiahuanako 
show existed there — long before the Inca period, 

1 Naumann, quoted in the Encyc. Brit, " Japan." 

2 Sir Clements Markham, May, 1910. 



THE LOST CONTINENT 311 



for the Incas knew nothing of its origin — 
could have been selected where food supplies 
were not available. Some of the cut and carved 
monoliths of these ruins are unequalled in size 
in any part of the world, it is stated, except 
Egypt. It was argued that i,ooo feet elevation 
would have been sufficient to account for the 
phenomenon, the ruins being at present at about 
12,000 feet above sea -level. My own part in 
this discussion 1 was to the effect that it seemed 
difficult that stones so delicately poised upon each 
other as are found in these ancient walls could 
have escaped displacement in such a prodigious 
earth-movement. Further, the ancient Castle of 
Chavin, in Northern Peru, stands upon the banks 
of a stream, as, apparently, it was built, and it 
seems difficult to suppose that this stream could 
have flowed on unaltered as before if the whole 
region had suffered elevation. 

As to the very recent upraising of the Andes 
geologically, there is no question whatever. The 
mountains, vast and grand as they are, are the 
" newest " in the world perhaps, and some 
authorities have stated that they had no existence 
even in so late a period as the Cretaceous. 
Quoted also was the Huarochiri myth that " when 
Huirakocha was here our land was Yunca." The 
first -named place is an elevated region ; the last 
is upon the coast, and embraced the Chimu king- 
dom, ruins of whose epoch have been described. 
Indications of the upraising of the Andes are 
as an open book to the traveller. The huge 
1 Geographical Journal, October, 1910. 



312 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



fossil ammonites and cephalopods which I 
observed and sketched, 1 existing in large numbers 
in the limestone strata at 14,000 feet elevation, 
some of them 3 and 4 feet in diameter, were, of 
course, denizens of the sea -bottom once. Also 
the huge masses of shell conglomerate in those 
high upland regions bear eloquent witness. 
Bones of mastodons have been found at 13,000 
feet in Bolivia, and gigantic fossil ant-eaters in 
what is now desert. The great peak of Illimani, 
21,204 feet elevation, is fossil -bearing to its 
summit. There are, in brief, many indications 
of the recent and rapid rise of the mountain chain 
of Andes from the ocean, parts of it undoubtedly 
within the time of man's habitation of the region ; 
and that it is still rising is also shown. In other 
places at its extremities the chain has, on the 
contrary, become submerged, as in the south of 
Chile ; whilst the North American Cordillera, 
in Alaska, has sunk and remains in places as 
tree-covered island-tops. Darwin maintained that 
the Peruvian coast had risen 85 feet during the 
time of human life there, as shown by Indian 
remains . 2 

As to the theory of the subsidence of land 
areas in the Pacific, this was substantiated to 
some extent by the borings undertaken in 1897 
at Funafuti. This island is a typical atoll or 
coral island in the Ellice group, and was selected 
as the scene of operations made by the expedi- 
tion sent out by the Royal Society of London. 

1 See my book u The Andes and the Amazon." 

2 " Coral Reefs/' Darwin. 



THE LOST CONTINENT 313 



The purpose was to test, by means of a deep 
boring, the question at issue between the Darwin 
and Murray theories as to the formation of such 
atolls. Darwin's theory was that of " sub- 
sidence." He argued that coral islands must 
have a rocky base, upon which the corals build, 
as coral -builders do not flourish below a depth 
of 20 fathoms ; and that it was inconceivable 
that there could exist in the Pacific so vast a 
number of submarine peaks or banks rising to 
about that depth below the surface and none 
above it, but that the deep coral reefs must have 
been formed as subsidence proceeded. The 
borings, made to a depth of 1,114 f eet > estab- 
lished this theory as mainly correct, or at least 
for that part of the Pacific ; and therefore 
Funafuti would appear to have been formed in 
an area of subsidence. 

Reliable authorities consider that probably the 
large groups of low -lying islands in the Pacific 
and Indian Oceans have been formed under the 
same conditions, and that such subsidences may 
have taken place within the time of man. The 
Funafuti borings established beyond doubt that 
Polynesia is within an area of comparatively 
recent subsidence, and it is argued that land 
connections were formerly more continuous, and 
might have afforded easy passage to migrating 
peoples. 

In this connection it is to be recollected that 
the people of the new Stone Age overran the 
earth in early times. The dolman -builders occu- 
pied both Korea and Japan, and from these 



314 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



Pacific-fronting lands of Asia it would have been 
easy for them to spread over the Polynesian 
region, in the same way that they ranged over 
Europe — Scandinavia, Great Britain, and Ireland 
— leaving us many legacies of their art, such as 
Stonehenge and other monuments. " To the 
men of the Neolithic Age, then, represented in 
Polynesia, perhaps, by the more light -com - 
plexioned and regular -featured of them, it is 
reasonable to attribute the astonishing structures 
scattered about the regions described. That 
these remains assume so many different forms 
is doubtless due to their varying environment, 
but it is remarkable that they appear generally 
to be so out of proportion with the restricted 
places whereon they are encountered. It is 
natural to suppose that if a partial subsidence 
of these culture areas did take place, the cul- 
ture would be bound to degenerate with its 
narrowed locality." 1 

Thus it is that, interwoven with man's inhabit- 
ing of these wave-lapped Pacific islands, coasts, 
peninsulas, archipelagoes, there have been mighty 
geological changes. What is the real explanation 
of these things? What unrecorded Noahs have 
journeyed on these waters ? However it may be, 
there are, throughout these regions, as it has been 
well put, " echoes of sublime theogonies and 
philosophies which are still heard in the oral 
traditions and folklore of the Polynesians." 



1 See Encyc. Brit. 



CHAPTER XVII 



WORLD-WIDE AFFINITIES 

The voice of mythology — A new science — Analogous 
romances — The psalms of the Mexicans and Peruvians — 
The Creation myth of the Hydahs — The " Redeemer" of 
the Nootkas — The copper canoe — Emblems of the Sun 
God — Flood story of the Okanagans — Scomalt — Deluge 
story of the Melanesians — Qat the hero — Prayer of the 
voyager — General belief in a Supreme Being — Sun- 
worship — Roman Catholic mythology — Aboriginal belief 
in immortality — Curious customs — The couvarde — 
Phallism — a Indecent " Inca images — Singular custom in 
Peru — Scarab-worship of the South American Chaco — 
Native veracity — Travellers' veracity — Missionaries' good 
faith — Flood stories — The Book of Enoch and the 
Deluge — Theosophy and the Central American ruins. 

The field of mythology and the numerous 
theogonies of the regions which surround the 
Pacific Ocean — North and South America, Poly- 
nesia, Australasia — is one which yields a great 
amount of detail in endeavouring to establish a 
connection between the Old World and the New, 
and doubtless it will, in the future, furnish more 
abundant material for analogy as it becomes 
more studied and recorded. 

It is to be recollected that until a com- 
paratively recent date the study of mythology 

315 



316 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



was but a desultory science. It was " hampered 
by orthodox notions and traditions, and even 
more so by our lack of knowledge of the real 
natural history of man and ignorance of the 
ancient languages." Until very recent times these 
long-perished tongues, such as the Babylonian, 
Egyptian, and Sanscrit, were books sealed and 
hidden, and it is only as a result of concentrated 
and painstaking effort— as in every other advance- 
ment of knowledge—that the wise men of the 
West have been enabled to master their secrets. 
Further, the science of anthropology, the study of 
the development or evolution of human institu- 
tions from those dark ages of primitive savagery 
towards civilisation, is a new one, as far as 
welding it into a system goes. 

Probably in the future the mystery of the 
distribution of analogous myths and ancient 
stories, practically similar, all over the world, 
and among widely separated races, will be ex- 
plained. We shall have to account not only for 
the origin and existence of these strange myths, 
but also for their presence, apparently indepen- 
dently, among nations. No one at present can 
affirm that these myths and traditions may not 
have spread from a single and common source, 
on the one hand, or affirm that they were n^ot 
independent inventions on the other. 

Without, however, proceeding farther at this 
moment upon that line of thought, let us cast 
a glance at some of these religions or myth- 
ologies of America, Polynesia, and Australasia, 
and at some of the curious customs which seem 



WORLD-WIDE AFFINITIES 317 

to offer a link of universal connection, as if 
derived from some early and world-wide cosmo- 
gony. We have Creation stories, Flood stories, 
fables of virgin births and of shadowy Redeemers 
in great profusion. The prayers and supplica- 
tions of some of these prehistoric and existing 
peoples are worthy of the utterances of David 
or Solomon, veritable psalms of beauty and 
chaste earnestness. We shall always be re- 
minded, in studying them, how strongly Nature 
and natural phenomena appealed to the primitive 
mind, how greatly such entered into their lives. 
They cultivated an abstract world which we of 
the " machine age " of the advanced nations have 
left behind at present ; they were in touch with 
Nature in a way which we have lost, but to 
which we shall inevitably have to return before 
we can expect to learn much more about the 
origin and destiny of the human race. This will 
come, and having shed the superstition of the 
savage, gross as it was, and the selfishness of 
the moderns, brutal as it is, we shall attain to 
greater knowledge. Let us not despise the 
" savage " races or their mythologies ; they 
afford useful lessons for us. 

The religious systems of the Mexicans and the 
Peruvians have been considered in the chapters 
devoted to those particular cultures, and they 
were the most advanced of any obtaining among 
the peoples that look over the Pacific, and, 
indeed, were in some respects the equal of the 
Oriental nations. The prayer of the Mexican 
prince Nezahualcoyotl, the " Solomon of 



318 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



Anahuac," in which his oppressed spirit ques- 
tions the use of false gods, acknowledges and 
insists upon the existence of a supreme being, 
and seeks consolation for those acute sufferings 
of the spirit which philosophy brings, has been 
quoted, and it is only one of various prayers of 
that time and place. The beautiful Inca address 
to the Creator is one which similarly arrests the 
attention, as asking for support and enlighten- 
ment amid the doubts and shadows of the dark 
and difficult world in which thinking man of 
whatever age or country finds he is plunged, 
and from which he can only escape by the 
exercise of the things of the mind. 

The Hydah Indians of British Columbia believe 
in a Solar Spirit as the great Creator and Supreme 
ruler. i They do not compare this spirit with the 
material sun, which is regarded as a thing apart. 
This reminds us of the Inca beliefs . The Nootkas, 
the neighbouring British Columbian tribe, have 
a tradition of a supernatural teacher and bene- 
factor, an old man who came to them in Nootka 
Sound long ago, in a canoe of copper with 
copper paddles, and, indeed, everything of copper 
about him. He landed, and informed the people 
that he came from the sky, instructed them in 
many things, and told them that their country 
would eventually be destroyed — that they should 
all die, but rise up after death and live with 
him above . 

This angered the people, and they killed the 
prophetic messenger, a crime which brought 
1 Vide Bancroft, " Native Races." 



WORLD-WIDE AFFINITIES 319 



them some material benefit, as ever since copper 
and its use have remained with them. Huge 
images carved in wood still stand in the Nootka 
houses, intended to represent the form and hold 
in remembrance the visit of this old man — 
by which visit is not improbably intended to be 
signified an avatar or incarnation of that chief 
deity or great spirit worshipped by many Cali- 
fornian tribes as "the Old Man above." 1 

Bancroft quotes from another author, 2 who 
describes " a painted and ornamented plate of 
native copper, some ij feet by 2 J feet, kept 
with great care in a wooden case by the tribe 
at Fort Rupert, which was highly prized." There 
is no explanation as to how this copper came 
among them. Probably it was from a piece of 
native copper hammered out, for it is to be 
recollected that the metal exists freely in a 
natural state in the northern parts of North 
America. " This plate of copper was oval in 
shape, painted with curious devices, eyes of all 
sizes being especially conspicuous. Similar 
sheets of copper are described by Schoolcraft, as 
in use among certain of the Vesperic aborigines. 
May they not all be intended for symbols of the 
sun such as that reverenced by the Peruvians? " 

We shall recollect, in this connection, that an 
elliptical plate of gold was placed on the wall 
of the temple at Cuzco, as representing the Deity. 

The Okanagans— another of the tribes of the 
North American Pacific coast region — says Ban- 
croft, believe in a good spirit or Master of Life, 
1 Bancroft. 2 Lord, Naturalist, vol. ii. 



320 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



and in a bad spirit ; also they have their great 
mythical ruler and heroine, Scomalt, whose story 
is intimately connected with a kind of fall or 
paradise lost. Long ago, so long ago that the 
sun was quite young, and no bigger than a star, 
there was an island far out at sea called the 
White Man's Island, inhabited by a white race 
of gigantic stature, governed by a tall, fair 
woman, a great " medicine " called Scomalt. At 
last the peace of the island was destroyed by 
war, and the noise of battle was heard, the white 
men fighting with each other ; Scomalt was very 
angry ; she rose up, declared she would not be 
vexed any more with them, and drove the rebel- 
lious ones to the end of the island, which she broke 
off and pushed out to sea. Tossed about for 
days, the piece of land drifted, and all upon it 
died but one man and one woman, who at length 
were able to make a canoe, and after paddling 
for many suns they came to land. But their 
whiteness had changed to a dusky reddish colour, 
and all the people of the continent, who are 
descended from them are, according to this 
legend, of that colour as a result. 

Another mythical being of pre-human race, 
the hero of a Deluge myth, was Qat, of the Mela- 
nesians — that black people of mysterious origin 
in the Pacific Islands and Archipelagoes. Qat, 
like so many other " culture-heroes " — Quetzal- 
coatl of Mexico and Huirakocha of Peru, for 
example — came or disappeared mysteriously, in 
his departure from Vanua Levu Island, and white 
men arriving in the island were mistaken for 



WORLD-WIDE AFFINITIES 321 



him. The Melanesian mythology contains a 
prayer to Qat, spoken by the devotee who is 
supposed to be in danger with his canoe, quoted 
as follows : " Qate ! Marawa ! look down on 
me ; smooth the sea that I may go safely ; beat 
down the crests ; let the tide-rip settle down away 
from me, that I may come to a quiet landing- 
place." Thus has man, in all ages, prayed that 
he may be brought to his " desired haven." 

It would not be possible here to recount the 
numerous myths and beliefs of the various tribes 
of the North American coast, dealing with kin- 
dred matters, but they appear generally to 
embody some belief in a lofty or Supreme Being, 
mixed up with more or less barbarous priest- 
craft. 

For the remarkable prayers of the Mexicans 
the chapter in Bancroft 1 may well be studied, 
as well as Prescott. There is no doubt that in 
part they have been changed by Spanish 
chroniclers, hut nevertheless they show suffi- 
ciently the innate reverence of the aboriginal 
heart, and a desire for communion with 
Omnipotence, which they expressed in what 
form they could. 

As regards sun-worship, the extensive practice 
of this in both the New and the Old Worlds 
might well be taken as an argument for early 
association. But we must recollect that it is a 
very natural religion. When we have stood, as I 
have often stood, upon the bleak highlands of the 
Andes, waiting the sun, to pursue our journey, 
1 " Native Races," vol. iii. 

21 



322 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



shivering until his warm rays, preceded by the 
rose -tints of the dawn, fall upon us, we shall 
appreciate the feeling of adoration which the 
native felt for the flashing orb. The same may 
be said for Mexico. In the highlands the 
diurnal change of temperature is very marked, 
due to the elevation, and the early morning is 
often bitterly cold, and 1 until the sun rises there is 
no life among the peones, who shiver or squat 
against the walls of their adobe huts, waiting the 
first sun rays. 

The Polytheistic religious systems of the 
American tribes and others cannot be regarded 
as " uniquely savage " necessarily : recollecting 
the heaven of the Greeks and Romans, nor for 
that matter of the Roman Catholic Church to- 
day. The array of saints bulks larger in the 
mind of the poor Mexican or Peruvian than the 
Supreme Being, and the hideous fiends depicted 
by the priests in these countries— especially de- 
picted by the bedsides of sinners, waiting to carry 
them off at the last moment !— -are certainly not 
less repulsive than the evil spirits of the savage 
mythologies of the Indians. Pictures of serpents 
with claws, wings, beaks and tails, and fiery 
eyes are sold in the streets, shops, and churches 
in Spanish-American towns, and the mind of 
many a tender maid has been stocked with 
horrors thereby, and by demoniacal teachings 
which have permeated her whole life. Even the 
Protestant Church has not yet outgrown these 
influences. 

Into the details of their metempsychosis, and 



WORLD-WIDE AFFINITIES 323 



the belief in immortality of the early American 
people, it would be impossible to enter at length 
here. Those who are interested therein will find 
an exhaustive discussion of the subject in Ban- 
croft's work. 1 We shall always observe, in 
studying such subjects, how the accounts and 
opinions of travellers and observers differ, at 
times contradicting each other, pulled this way 
or that, doubtless, by the personal equation. 
But the evidence for the existence of the abstract 
world in the savage mind is generally stronger 
than that against it. Often beautiful and 
romantic conceptions are held ; often they are 
marred by some serpent -trail of bestiality or 
cruelty. But there seems to be in these myth- 
ologies generally a kind of belief in poetic justice 
and triumphant virtue. 

Among curious customs of the Indians of 
Central California that of the couvarde pre- 
vailed, that curious and ludicrous custom which 
is of such wide occurrence. When childbirth 
comes upon a wife the husband puts himself or 
is put to bed, and there lies groaning as if he 
were experiencing the labour pains ; and he is 
nursed and tended by the women for several days 
with as much seriousness and care as if he were 
the real sufferer. This proceeding, which seems 
so ridiculous, may have arisen from some native 
philosophy or from the custom in primitive 
peoples of all ages, in which in early family life 
descent and heritage were considered as coming 
through the mother. It has been observed by 
' " Native Races," vol. iii. 



324 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



different travellers in Africa, India, China, Borneo, 
and elsewhere. I have heard of it in the remote 
interior of Peru ; and among the Mexicans 
to-day it is a common belief that the husband 
feels unwell at the time his wife falls sic,k in 
pregnancy ! 

It is perhaps worthy of note that phallism, 
that form of Nature -worship based on the 
generative and reproductive powers of man, asso- 
ciated with Phoenicians, Greeks, Hindus, and 
others, obtained also in early Peru, Mexico, and 
Central America, showing that the worship of 
the reciprocal principles of Nature was world- 
wide. The sculptures upon some of the Central 
American buildings, when first seen by some of 
the foremost students of that region, 1 were found 
to represent membra conjuncta in coitu. In Peru 
the attention of the traveller will be drawn to 
the " indecent " relics of the Incas, in small 
moulded or sculptured images recovered from 
the huacas or tombs. I have had such offered 
me in sale by native women, who, however, saw 
nothing remarkable about them, and if I blushed 
they did not. The monolithic pillars of early 
America, especially at Copan, are considered to 
be emblems of this form of worship, and are 
described as similar to the sculptured phallus- 
pillars of the East. Images found in various 
parts of Mexico and Peru are remarkable for 
their bestial character often. They are to be 
seen both in museums and in the possession of 
Indians in remote districts, recovered from burial- 
1 Stephens and Catherwood. See Bancroft, 



WORLD-WIDE AFFINITIES 325 



places, and whether they represent mere per- 
nicious caprice on the part of their makers, or 
whether they have some emblematic significance, 
it is impossible to say. As a rule, or at least as 
far as my observation goes, the Indians of 
Spanish -American countries are not by nature 
indecent -minded, but modest. 

I do not know whether it would be admissible 
to endeavour to trace any connection with the 
Old World through the phallic cult — if such it 
is and may be termed — unconsciously followed 
by the native arrieros and messengers in the 
Peruvian interior. It is to be recollected that 
Hermes, among the Greeks, was the protector 
of travellers and the god of roads and doorways, 
and his images were used as boundary-marks. 
In certain places a phallus served as his emblem. 
It was usual to form a cairn of stones round or 
near his images, every wayfarer adding one. In 
my journeys in Peru I observed — as any traveller 
would— the custom of the mule-drivers in deposit- 
ing, upon reaching the summits of passes, a stone 
to the heap of stones and pebbles which had 
accumulated there, generally around the wooden 
cross often placed at such points . I have noticed 
them descend from their mule even before reach- 
ing the spot to select a stone for the purpose.- 
Questioning them on various occasions as to this, 
they replied that it was an ancient custom, and 
further, that it was done, they said, as a test 
of the fidelity of their wives in their absence ; 
for if on the return journey homewards the stone 
they had placed there was undisturbed their 



326 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



women had been faithful ; otherwise the husband 
had been betrayed, and upon reaching his 
habitation it was likely that castigation would 
be given to the unfortunate woman ! 

The Indians of the Chaco — that enormous and 
savage region of South America — removed from 
the Andes, and its old civilisation was, never- 
theless, probably influenced in earlier times by 
the Incas, who may have penetrated into parts 
of the continent of which all traces are now 
lost. That the Incas did influence the peoples 
of the Montana or upper forest regions is well 
established. 1 

The religious beliefs of the Chaco people 
embody the idea of the Creation, and singularly 
enough they regard the beetle as the symbol of 
the creative power, a feature of their mythology 
which is remarkable in its close resemblance to 
the Egyptian Scarabaeus, says a writer in a 
book recently published. 2 " The Creator of all 
things spiritual and material is symbolised by. 
a beetle among these people. The Creator in 
the guise of the beetle — having first created the 
material universe — sent forth from its hole in 
the earth a race of powerful beings who for 
a time appear to have ruled the universe. After- 
wards the beetle formed man and woman from 
the clay which it threw up from its hole, and 
they were sent forth into the world joined to- 
gether like the Siamese twins. They met with 

1 See my book " The Andes and the Amazon." 

2 "An Unknown People in an Unknown Land," W. B. 
Grubb, London, 191 1. 



WORLD-WIDE AFFINITIES 327 



persecution from their powerful predecessors, and 
accordingly appealed to the creating beetle to 
free them from their disadvantageous formation. 
He therefore separated them, and gave them 
power to propagate their species so that they 
might become numerous enough to withstand 
their enemies. It then appears that some time 
after this the first-created powerful beings dis- 
appeared, and the beetle ceased to take an active 
part in affairs of the world. It is rather re- 
markable when we consider that they have 
no written records, and no system of carefully 
transmitted traditions, that they should retain a 
belief in an original Creator and in the immor- 
tality of the soul. Representations of the beetle 
and figures associated with it are the most 
common mythological drawings on the gourds 
of these people. They regard the soul as im- 
mortal, but as simply a continuation of the 
present in a disembodied condition." 

This writer draws attention to the analogy of 
the Chaco beetle myth with that of the Egyptians, 
and quotes the " Dictionary of the Bible." 1 The 
beetle myth is spoken of : " Out of the mud 
which the Nile left in its flooding men 
saw myriad forms of life issue. That of the 
Scarabaeus was the most conspicuous. It seemed 
to them self -generated, called into being by the 
light, the child only of the sun. Not only in 
Egypt, but in Etruria and Syria and other 
countries the same strange emblem appeared." 

In observing the nature of customs of remote 
1 Smith. 



328 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



lands, the traveller is himself sometimes a biassed 
personage. He may be influenced in his investi- 
gations, at times unconsciously, to represent 
things as he would rather they were than cold- 
bloodedly to render their exact scientific value. 
This was very marked in the early Spanish mis- 
sionaries, who were often divided in their desire 
on the one hand to denounce the " idolatrous 
customs " of natives, or to make the aboriginal 
rites and fables conform with " revelation " on 
the other — the revelation, that is, of the Christian 
doctrines. This was especially the case in 
Spanish America. For a long time in Peru there 
existed a stone with a mysterious mark upon 
it, which, however, the Spanish priests explained 
as being a miraculous footprint of one of the 
apostles, who, they averred, must have visited 
that region ! Even in modern times the mis- 
sionary has sometimes eagerly set out to prove 
that the myths of his heathen flock are but a 
corrupted version of Biblical happenings, and 
that this or that myth is corroborative of this 
or that Scriptural incident ; or, on the other 
hand, he, with professional zeal, teaching that 
religion can only come by revelation, will pooh- 
pooh the native myths, and exclaim that they 
contain no religion at all. In the one case he 
falls into the condition of accommodating all 
he hears to what he terms " the truth," and in 
the other despises or neglects the study of the 
myths of his savage flock. Thus missionaries 
are sometimes biassed. 

It would not, however, be fair to make this 



WORLD-WIDE AFFINITIES 329 



indictment against all missionaries ; for it is a 
well-known fact, and especially as regards the 
Pacific Isles, that missionaries have been the 
medium for a great deal of our scientific know- 
ledge — knowledge, obtained during their praise- 
worthy work and self-sacrifice, which otherwise 
would have been lost to science. Moreover, the 
ordinary or the scientific traveller who is not 
a missionary may incur equally grave errors. 
He may be on the one hand a sentimentalist, or, 
on the other, a materialist. The first attitude 
will cause him to read Divine meanings into 
myths and customs which are entirely un- 
warranted, whilst the other, believing nothing 
except what " the evidence of his senses " affords, 
cannot admit anything noble or lofty in the 
mind of the poor savage, and derides any 
supposed glimmerings of the notion of a God 
in his myths and altars. Another type of 
traveller is he who puts versions of Biblical or 
historical matters into his native informant's 
mouth by suggestion, and who, in the very act 
of asking how the Creation of the world came 
about, or if they had ever had a Flood and if any 
one was saved and how, is perhaps furnishing 
the savage with an opportunity for romancing 
in the suggestion advanced : something he had 
never thought of before. 

Further, the good faith of the traveller must 
be above suspicion, and to give weight to his 
evidence this must be established, as well as his 
means of communicating with the savage or 
native, and his judicial powers. It has even been 



330 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



stated that such evidence is most valuable when 
given by ignorant men, who are astonished at 
meeting with things that ethnologists are already 
familiar with in different parts of the globe. Also 
" undesigned coincidences " are valuable, cor- 
roborating the observations of travellers, ancient 
and modern. But the traveller, whoever he may 
be, who has an open and sympathetic mind to- 
wards the native, will find how often he will 
meet him in conversation as man to man, when 
mutual confidence has been earned and neither is 
imposing upon the other. From my own ex- 
perience of natives or aborigines, I do not think 
they are generally liars, or prone to inventions 
of stories. As a rule, they are impressed by 
natural truths, and communicate these impres- 
sions rather than employing ingenuity to fabricate 
things. Their natural tendency is to tell the truth 
rather than otherwise, and they are less prone 
than " civilised " man to distort facts. The de- 
liberate garbling or falsification of news is foreign 
to the " Indian " character. The political and 
Press liars, who are so marked a feature of 
English and American life, in which circum- 
stances are wilfully distorted to serve certain 
ends, are a growth of civilisation. The Indian 
generally tells you what he really sees or thinks. 
He often has admirable traits of fidelity and 
accuracy. In Spanish-American countries, such 
as Peru and Mexico, there is abundant oppor- 
tunity for observing this fact when the traveller 
is in a position and of a disposition to come into 
direct contact with the aborigines. The mestizo, 



WORLD-WIDE AFFINITIES 331 



or person of mixed Spanish and native blood, 
of whom the higher classes consist in the main, 
is far more " ingenious " in the matter of twisting 
facts to his own advantage, and his native sense 
of honour is far below that of the raza conquls- 
tada, or conquered race. The modern Spanish- 
American, urbane of manner, never at a loss for 
words and reasons, often hospitable and perhaps 
too fulsomely courteous, will sometimes close 
an agreement with you and cheat you afterwards 
if he can : a thing the Indian would not do. 

As I have remarked elsewhere, extreme pains- 
taking care marks the Mexican or Peruvian Indian 
in his small handicrafts, or in his methods of work 
and observation. I have often observed this 
quality with surprise, and have specially noted 
the fact that when employed to act or inquire, 
their information was generally correct. The 
attitude of the man of Spanish or mestizo race 
towards the Indian is often one of contempt, 
and he may pretend to dismiss your own charac- 
terising of them and their stories with a " Son 
may mentirosas, sehor " ("They are great 
liars "). It is, probable, however, that when they 
are liars they have in the main learned the art 
of perversion of the truth from the white man. 
From these reasons I believe that native legends 
have considerable value. They are not " Press 
notices/' but are records of impressions. 

As regards myths and stories concerning the 
Flood, these are seen to be common, and " a 
conspectus of illustrative Flood stories from 
different parts of the world would throw great 



332 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



light on the problems before us," says a recent 
authority on the subject. The Mexican deluge 
myth as well as the Tower of Babel story of 
Cholula have been mentioned. The early Peru- 
vians had an " inspired llama " Flood-story, of 
how a llama warned its master . of a pending 
cataclysm and how both reached the peak of a 
hill in time to escape. It is to be recollected 
that the Aztecs and the Incas both inhabited 
regions subject to flood, the first in the 
periodical inundations of the Valley of Mexico, 
which, being a hydrographic entity, had no 
outlet, and the others in the appalling tidal waves 
that have devastated the Pacific coast of South 
America even during its known history, as a 
result of volcanic or tectonic activity. How- 
ever, the North American tales show clearly 
" that the deluge is properly a second creation, 
and that the serpent is as truly connected with 
the second chaos as the first. One of them, too, 
gives a striking parallel to the Babylonian name 
Hasis-Andra (the Very Wise) whence comes the 
corrupt form Xisuthrus ; the deluge hero of the 
Hare Indians is called Kunyan, the intelligent. 
Polynesia also gives us most welcome assistance, 
for its Flood stories still present clear traces of 
the primitive imagination that the sky was a 
great blue sea, on which the sun, moon, and 
stars (or constellations) were voyagers." The 
prevalence of deluge stories among North 
American myths — which often " distinctly con- 
nect serpents with the deluges " — is well known, 1 
1 See " Deluge " in the last edition of the Encyc. Brit. 



WORLD-WIDE AFFINITIES 333 



and the temptation to think that they may all 
have had in remote ages a common source is 
strong. Serpent worship all over the world, 
from Mexico to Asia, Scotland, Ireland, and 
Scandinavia in extremely remote times, certainly 
seems to give an idea of some ancient universal 
cult. 

A study of myths, far beyond what it would 
be possible in these pages even to hint at, shows 
how similar such may be among nations far 
removed from each other — the Semitic and 
Indo-European races, the Australians, the South 
Sea Islanders, the Eskimos and the Zulus, the 
Mexicans, the Peruvians — as if they had been 
handed on throughout great extensions of time. 
The question arises as to whether such things 
are purely " human/' and have arisen indepen- 
dently from the savage state of the intellect and 
are but the early products of the evolving mind, 
or whether their diffusion is due to transmission 
and borrowing. Some may argue that myths 
could spring up anywhere, and as time went on 
become part of accepted beliefs and literature. 

In the consideration of this subject we may, 
if we desire, enter into the realm of the mystic 
and the prophetic, of Theosophy and theology. 
I will quote here from a singular and interest- 
ing book by Kenealy 1 in which are frequent 
references to the lost continent of Atlantis in con- 
nection with Enoch, and the statement that part 

1 " Enoch : the Second Messenger of God," Edward V. H. 
Kenealy, LL.D., D.C.L., London, 1872, which I happened to 
come across after concluding this book. (See also page 43). 



334 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



of the writings of Enoch " is a prediction of 
the Atlantean Deluge." " From the description 
of what happened to Enoch in the first chapter 
of his book it is evident that he was one of the 
trusted priests of the temple ; a night -watcher 
or astrologue of the highest degree, called by 
the Phoenicians ' contemplators of the heavens.' 
The great eminence to which he rose in astro- 
nomical and scientific knowledge entitles us to 
believe that he was of supreme rank among the 
wisest men of his era." 

The following is the passage referred to, which 
I quote from the version given by this author : — 

" Destruction is but the prelude to Renewal ; 
Death is but the portal of Life ; 
Every truth must be made anew. 
Behold I saw the Heaven in a blaze of purity, 
And I saw the Earth absorbed into an Abyss, 
The rolling sphere inclined, 
The moment of destruction was at hand ; 
Mountains suspended over mountains, 
Hills sinking upon hills, 
Lofty trees toppled headlong, 
They sank downwards into chasms ; 
My voice faltered, I cried out and spake : 
' Lo the earth — it is destroyed ! ' " 

Exceptionally beautiful are the words preced- 
ing the passage, in which Enoch describes his 
vision of the past, how he saw a city splendid 
with gold and marble, with stately towers, 
palaces, and temples, how he asked the guardian 
of the gate how long the city had stood there, 
and received the reply that it had stood there 
always, and would always stand, years without 



WORLD-WIDE AFFINITIES 335 



number. Then a cloud rolled over him ; a thou- 
sand years passed ; he sought the city again, only 
to find a desert where it had stood. Asking a 
wanderer whom he met where the noble city was, 
he received the reply that no city had ever stood 
there — desert it had been always. Another cloud 
and another thousand years, and seeking the 
desert, he found a forest, and asking one who 
reclined beneath a tree as to the departed desert, 
was told that no desert had ever existed, that 
a forest had always been there and would greenly 
flourish there until the end of time. Again a 
cloud and a thousand years, and seeking the 
forest, Enoch found tents and smiling plains, 
flocks, herds, children playing among flowers, and 
asking a venerable father how long those sweetly- 
blooming fields had existed, learned that they 
had always been there, from the first moment of 
the world. Once more a cloud and a thousand 
years and going that way again, behold ! a great 
ocean rolling, with huge billows, and no sign 
of life save a solitary man in a boat, who in 
reply to Enoch's inquiry as to where were the 
tents and smiling landscape, replied : " Thou 
dreamest ; there are no fields nor tents, nor ever 
have been, but from the first these waves have 
rolled over the boundless deeps beneath ; and 
they shall roll for ever and ever, unchanged and 
mighty as they now be." I have condensed this 
passage from the original. 

Enoch the Prophet, the second messenger 
from God to man," the author says, " was called 
the Prophet because he first made known to 



336 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



the initiated in the mysteries the terrible con- 
vulsion which buried Atlantis in the bottom 
of the sea — part of the extraordinary prophecy 
relating to the Flood. ' And I saw that the 
earth became inclined.' This is a most 
extraordinary assertion, that the Flood was 
caused by the disturbance of the axis of the earth, 
and is totally original and unexpected. I look 
upon it as a very curious and ancient tradi- 
tion respecting the cause of the Flood, which 
has been considered to have been its real cause 
by, many, both of the ancient and modern philo- 
sophers. Few persons who have read the Book 
of Enoch will deny that this is a most curious 
and striking tradition." 

It is to be recollected, in this connection, that 
recent authorities describe a much later date 
and varied authorship for the Book of Enoch. 

In the above-mentioned book — and it is really 
the object of quoting it here— there are many 
allusions to a connection between the ancient 
world of Asia and the old civilisation of 
Mexico and Peru, some of which I quote here, 
in which the old, well-worn arguments are 
given. 

" All the traditions maintain that a person 
whom we call Noah, by some means, no matter 
what they were, foresaw that destruction ap- 
proached. Tradition says that he erected pillars 
with inscriptions in the land of Suri-Ad, or the 
Holy Sura. . . . Now, if we suppose that ruin 
did not happen in a moment, but that a year, or 
even more time, was required to effect the whole 



WORLD-WIDE AFFINITIES 337 

by successive earthquakes, is it not possible, if 
such a scientific and sacerdotal Government 
existed as I have contemplated, that the Supreme 
Pontiff and the Court may have saved themselves 
and their sacred literature in a ship or floating 
house? . . . And why should not the axis of 
the earth have become changed to its utmost 
extreme by earthquake shocks? . . . hundreds 
or thousands of years before, and the last shock 
a very moderate one, just enough to sink 
Atlantis? . . . The result, says Nimrod, 
(iv. 91), arising from the earth's new axis 
was a vicissitude of climate such as had never 
been known before, siccis aer fervoribus ustus, 
canduii, et ventis glacies adstricta perpettdit. 
Then first the air began to glow with dry heats 
and the ice hung bound by the winds (Ov. 
Met. i. 119). The change of seasons introduced 
a remarkable change in Nature. . . . This 
proves that the author of Nimrod had no doubt 
of the Atlantean — that is, the true — deluge. A 
further observation may be made on the signs 
of the secret things, that we find traces of them 
still in the strange, unknown idols and char- 
acters of the Central cities, and their long-lost 
inhabitants — idols and characters which to the 
Spaniards appeared magical, and so they 
hastened to destroy them. These characters 
have, in many cases, resemblances also to the 
primeval Tartarian figures. Hence we find 
Humboldt exclaiming that striking analogies 
exist between the monuments of the old con- 
tinents and those of the Toltecs, who, arriving 

22 



338 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



on Mexican soil, built these colossal structures, 
truncated pyramids, divided by layers, like the 
temple of Belus at Babylon. Whence did they 
take the model of these edifices ? Were they of 
the Mongol race ? Did they descend from a 
common stock with the Chinese and the 
Japanese? It is now confessed that the original 
colonists of the Central Americas came from 
Asia, which contains all the physical and mental 
prototypes of the race. 1 Language, mythology, 
religion, dogma, their style of architecture, and 
their calendar as far as it is developed, point to 
that fruitful and central source of human dis- 
persion and nationality. Can it be doubted that 
after this Enochian priests carried this religion 
into the American continent? " 

A further passage says : " No unprejudiced 
person can doubt, when he has considered all the 
circumstances of similarity which have been 
pointed out between the natives of Mexico and 
the Asiatics, that the former were originally 
peopled from the latter by means of ships, and 
not by passing by an almost impassable passage 
over the frozen region near the North Pole. . . . 
Was Columbus the first discoverer of America, 
or did he only redeem the continent after 
it had in remote ages been found, peopled, and 
forgotten by the Old World? It is curious that 
this question has not been more generally 
raised, for it is very clear that the people whom 
Columbus found in America must have been 
descended from emigrants from the Old World, 
1 The italics are by the author quoted. 



WORLD-WIDE AFFINITIES 339 



and therefore America was known to the Old 
World before Columbus's time. Probably this 
communication took place on the opposite side 
of the world to ours, between the eastern coast 
of Asia and the side of America most remote 
from Europe, and it is quite possible that the 
inhabitants of Eastern Asia may have been 
aware of the existence of America, and kept up 
intercourse with it while our part of the Old 
World never dreamt of its existence. The im- 
penetrable barrier the Chinese were always 
anxious to preserve between themselves and the 
rest of the nations of the Old World renders it 
quite possible that they should have kept their 
knowledge of America to themselves, or at any 
rate from Europe. The objection that the art 
of navigation in such remote times was not suffi- 
ciently advanced to enable the Chinese to cross 
the Pacific and land on the shores of America is 
not conclusive, as we have now found that arts 
and sciences which were once generally sup- 
posed to be of quite modern origin existed in 
China ages before their discovery in Europe. 
. . . Why, then, should not the Chinese have 
been equally or more in advance of us in naviga- 
tion? . . . One fact, corroborative of the idea 
that the Old World, or at least some of 
the inhabitants of Asia, were aware of the 
existence of America before its discovery by 
Columbus is that many of the Arabian writers 
are fully convinced that the ancient Arabian 
geographers knew of America, and in support 
of this opinion point to passages in old works in 



340 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



which a country to the west of the Atlantic 
is spoken of. An Arab gentleman, General 
Huessin Pasha, in a work he has just written 
on America, called " En-Nessr-Et-Tayir," quotes 
from Djeldeki and other writers to show this. 
There is, however, amongst Chinese records, not 
merely vague references to a country to the west 
of the Atlantic but a circumstantial account of 
its discovery by the Chinese long before 
Columbus was born. A competent authority 
on such matters, J. Hanlay, the Chinese inter- 
preter in San Francisco, has lately written an 
essay on this subject, from which we gather the 
following startling statements, drawn from 
Chinese historians and geographers : — 

" ' Fourteen hundred years ago even America 
had been discovered by the Chinese and de- 
scribed by them. They stated that land to be 
about twenty thousand Chinese miles distant from 
China. About five hundred years after the birth 
of Christ, Buddhist priests repaired there and 
brought back the news that they had met with 
Buddhist idols and religious writings in the 
country already. Their descriptions in many 
respects resemble those of the Spaniards a thou- 
sand years afterwards. They called the country 
" Fusany," after a tree which grew there, whose 
leaves resemble those of the bamboo, whose bark 
the natives made clothes and paper of, and whose 
fruit they ate. These particulars correspond 
exactly with those given by the American 
historian Prescott, about the Maguey in Mexico.' " 

The Mexican maguey (Agave americana) is 



WORLD-WIDE AFFINITIES 341 



one of the most valuable plants in Mexico, put 
to a wide variety of uses, and the source of great 
wealth in the production of the national beverage 
pulquL 1 

The above -quoted writer speaks of the 
" religion, peace, security, and magnificent struc- 
tures of the mighty kingdom of Atlantis " as 
having been " brought from Asia into Atlantis 
by the Enochian religion, from which it diffused 
itself throughout the vast region of Central 
America." He also speaks of the reason of 
the destruction of the supposed Atlantis, attri- 
buted by Nimrod to punishment from above for 
the vices of its people, and quotes Plato as to 
Nimrod, that the Deluge did not kill the Atlan- 
toidae, but sent them " under the ground." This 
is reminiscent of the Mexican flood story and 
hieroglyphics, which is given on another page. 

Mysticism, indeed, has occupied itself a good 
deal with ancient America as connected with 
Asia, and in the works of the famous exponent 
of Theosophy, Madame Blavatsky, 2 some curious 
inferences are drawn. 

The present book was in the press when 
by chance I happened to open " Isis Un- 
veiled " and " A Modern Panarion," works I 
had never before read, and did not know 
contained — like Kenealy's " Enoch "—numerous 
references concerning the origin of the early 
American civilisations. These, whilst fantastic 

* See my " Mexico." 

3 "The Secret Doctrine," "A Modern Panarion," and 
" Isis Unveiled." 



342 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



in some instances, are of extreme interest in 
others, both as concerns the early Mexicans and 
the early Peruvians, and their supposed connec- 
tion in remote times with Babylon and Egypt, 
by early voyagers from Asia, as well as with the 
fabled Atlantis. These theories, of course, were 
dealt with by Brasseur de Bourbourg, Lord 
Kingsborough, Le Plongeon, and others whose 
theories have been discredited or derided. The 
time, however, is probably passing when 
it is necessary to deride that which cannot be 
explained by dogmatic methods. Imagination 
has never yet received its due as a precursor of 
fact in any branch of science or human work, 
but its value is being more greatly recognised 
to-day. 

Perhaps the most insistent argument of the 
exponent of these " esoteric " views is, that during 
the gradual sinking of Atlantis, part of the 
Atlanteans went eastwards, to the " old " world, 
and part westwards to the new," founding 
or influencing both civilisations— a hypothesis 
which at least has the merit of explaining certain 
attributes of early American culture which offer 
at present great difficulties to the theory of an 
Asiatic origin alone. 

To pursue these matters of affinities and com- 
parisons farther here, however, is but to travel 
in a circle, a mode of progression which no 
traveller enjoys. 



CHAPTER XVIII 



A SUBLIME COSMOGONY 

Anthropoid to architect — Necessity for more research — A 
many-sided subject — More light required — What is our 
foundation? — Teachings of archaeology — History repeats 
itself — A dim and distant stage — Retrospect of human 
movement — The great antiquity of mankind — An endless 
argument — The " All-Father " — A universal culture in 
remote times — Babel and the Flood — A golden age — A 
universal texture. 

Having completed the survey, literally from 
China to Peru — and investing, perhaps, that 
well-worn simile with a new meaning — it remains 
to sum up, or rather to gather together the main 
threads of this far-reaching problem. The 
survey is a wide one. I entered upon it with 
hesitation, and, in concluding, hope that in- 
dulgence will be accorded to its inevitable short- 
comings. From anthropoid to architect, from 
the gibbering savage to the psalmist -supplicator 
of the " Unknown God," through which vast field 
the presence or evolution of man in these Pacific- 
washed lands has ranged, is indeed a long 
journey ; and if any excuse is needed for so 
ambitious a task it must be in the fact that it 
has not been attempted before, and that it is 

343 



344 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



time a more intensive effort were given to the 
solution of the matter. It is indeed astonishing 
that greater popular and scientific interest has not 
been taken in this subject. 

We have seen how extensive and alluring is 
the field which its investigation affords, and it 
cannot be doubted that results would follow a 
painstaking and minute inquiry into all the factors 
and conditions connected with it. An example of 
how we may begin to lift the veil from the past 
is shown by a recent work 1 dealing with the dis- 
covery of North America before Columbus, how, 
by close research, old facts may be put in their 
true light and new facts unearthed. But this 
can only be carried out by those who command 
full leisure and the wherewithal for its accom- 
plishment. To perform it adequately we should 
have to ransack Europe, Asia, Africa, and 
America, not only on library shelves but in 
museums, tombs, ruins, deserts, and moun- 
tains. Ample time and a long purse are 
the adjuncts, coupled with that philosophical 
love of the past doings of mankind— not 
simply as being antique, but as bearing upon 
life and time as a whole, which furnishes the 
true detective -faculty of the investigator — which 
will, as time goes on, solve the Secret of the 
Pacific. One of the drawbacks hitherto has been 
in the fact that those who have been foremost in 
the archaeological study of the Old World have 
not dealt much with that of the New — perhaps 
they have despised it — and that those whose field 
1 " In Northern Mists," Nansen, 191 1. 



A SUBLIME COSMOGONY 345 



has been the New World have not had much 
knowledge, except perhaps from books, of the 
Old. It will be when these two fields of know- 
ledge become combined in the same study that 
more conclusive results may be looked for. 

I am well aware that to endeavour to describe 
the monuments of early America and the Pacific, 
and to attempt to discuss their culture areas and 
origins within the scope of a single short volume 
— matters upon which in their separate spheres 
a whole library has been written — was a project 
difficult of attainment, and I have contented 
myself with broad outlines mostly. But at least 
others may be stimulated thereby to take down 
their maps, encyclopaedias, and books of travel 
— perhaps to set out themselves — and arouse the 
somewhat sluggish English-speaking public to 
the romance which ethnology affords in this 
comparatively little -trodden field. 

Geological, biological, cultural — all these three 
phases of evolution have perforce come under 
consideration, and they present their respective 
problems, which must be solved in the future. 
The question of the former disposition of the 
continents ; their connection with others ; the 
" land-bridges " between them, over which man 
or his ancestors may have passed ; the disappear- 
ance of continents whose inhabitants have had 
to seek another refuge ; the vanishing of Atlantis 
— if such be allowed within the realm of the pos- 
sible ; the vanishing of a Pacific continent — if 
this also may be debated— of these matters we have 
learned practically all we know in the last half- 



346 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



century or three-quarters of a century, and we 
have much to learn still. 

Biologically, what is the basis of our know- 
ledge of man's evolution and our assigning of 
his probable early starting-point or cradle-land? 
Clever and elaborate theories and reasonings : 
and a few scattered bones of a man-ape in a drift 
in a Java forest, matters which can scarcely be 
looked upon as more than a working hypothesis, 
and which might be upset by some discovery to- 
morrow ! We might find that our beliefs as to 
man's physical beginnings are wrong. Some 
turning of the lane of science, thought, reason, 
may endow us with another origin. 

Then, as to man's cultural evolution and 
advancement, upon what do we found our 
knowledge ? How have we assigned to him his 
first habitations and communities and the cradle 
of civilisation? Upon archaeology, which, not 
much more than a generation or two ago, read the 
literature of Babylon and Egypt, and, by estab- 
lishing some missing links of walls, potsherds, and 
papyri, added four thousand years to our history. 
But there must be vast periods of mankind's 
activity, all over the world, of which at present 
we know nothing. New findings of antiquity are 
being made rapidly, and we believe that new and 
perhaps startling discoveries yet lie before us as 
regards the history of our race. 

Furthermore, it would seem that history is but 
repeating itself in the covering of the globe by, 
mankind. When we consider the profuse migra- 
tions of peoples in very early days, we are con- 



A SUBLIME COSMOGONY 347 



fronted with the fact that man seemed to move 
about over the earth as easily, or at least as 
freely, then as in these days of railways and 
steamers ! At any rate, we to-day are but repeat- 
ing the migration of early times. The world 
" boiled over " then as it is doing to-day. Arabs, 
Chinese, Hindus, Italians, Germans, British are 
encountered on every hand. At the building of 
the Panama Canal at the present time we 
encounter an astonishing mixture of races : 
Japanese, Chinese, East Indians with flowing 
beards and embroidered caps or turbaned heads, 
Arabs, negroes, British, French, Dutch West 
Indian, and native Spanish-American Indians. In 
North America the Anglo-Saxon peoples are 
trying their best to keep out the Asiatics, whilst 
the South Americans endeavour to attract them. 
Even in remote villages and mining camps 
in the Andes we find Arabs, Austrians, Chinese, 
Italians, Spaniards, Jews, and others, generally 
engaged as shopkeepers, in the congenial occupa- 
tion of making money— and this as a rule by the 
cheating of the native in short weights and high 
prices : also a very ancient custom ! 

In Asia especially history shows these ebulli- 
tions and migrations of people have taken place 
in remote periods, and their study brings convic- 
tion to the mind of the great antiquity of man- 
kind and of vast periods and movements of which 
to-day we know practically nothing. The 
shadows of past peoples and empires seem to 
deploy upon their stage before our eyes in 
strange and shadowy array, their migrations, 



348 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



their temples, their tombs fading away into the 
mists of some Great Period, out of which, from 
time to time, the spade of the archaeologist 
reveals new fragments. Let us be assured of 
one thing. There have been happenings in those 
remote times which will startle us when we learn 
about them, as inevitably we shall. We have 
yet to learn things of mankind's history which 
may upset some of our ideas to-day. 

When we come to sum up the opinions for 
and against the influence upon and peopling of 
America from Asia we find a preponderance on 
the affirmative side. The position of those who 
would close America absolutely to prehistoric in- 
fluence and immigration is as untenable as that 
of those who would close it against foreign immi- 
grants and influence to-day. America is not, and 
never has been, a world apart, and its discovery 
by Columbus must have been one of a series 
of visits made to the twin continents since 
geology rendered them an entity. America 
largely draws its population and its culture — 
both — from the Old World to-day, and must have 
done so in early times. 

Whilst it is not the intention of this book to 
affirm or deny, I would venture to urge that the 
" open door " to ancient Asia be maintained. To 
isolate the three Americas throughout the enor- 
mous periods that have elapsed since man in- 
habited the world is unnatural. There was no 
such purpose in Nature. We, ever looking for 
the regeneration of mankind, might have 
cherished the illusion that America was to be 



A SUBLIME COSMOGONY 349 



reserved as the clean new land of a selected 
race from the Old World, a people who 
might have made a step forward in civilisation 
and in lightening the burden of misery and 
oppression that weighs upon mankind. Was it 
so? Far from it. The United States have but 
perpetuated, and, indeed, exaggerated, the evils 
of the Old World, and themselves seem to show 
signs of decadence already. As for Spanish 
America, its communities are still in the Middle 
Ages of social life, except where they have, in 
some cases, emerged to conditions approxi- 
mating to those of the United States or Europe. 
Nature therefore had nothing in view in this 
respect of an ideal man in an ideal home, and 
we can but regard the three Americas as part 
of the world which must fight its way on con- 
jointly to social betterment. 

At the beginning of the second decade of this 
century society is in a marked state of flux. 
We may expect anything, from a world-wide 
revolution of labour against capital to the total 
extinction of nationalities. In the physical world 
we have long dwelt in security, but there is no 
guarantee that changes might not occur, such 
as could suddenly alter the configuration of seas 
and continents. One thing is certain— the too 
material culture of to-day has yet to yield to 
something nobler. 

In considering the origin-myths of nearly all 
the ancient peoples dealt with in this book, we 
are struck by the legends so commonly occurring 
of their having come " out of the sea," or of 



350 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



having migrated in some mysterious manner from 
some forgotten place, and this inclines the fancy 
towards distant or vanished continents. 

When we glance back at all these strange 
wanderings, traditions, and legends we seem to 
see bands of ancient people, led by resolute 
patriarchs, pressing onward through mountain 
fastnesses and tangled forests, halting painfully 
in their way across waterless deserts, settling 
here and there where smiling valleys spread their 
allurements, and where streams gushed forth 
from the hillsides. We seem to see strange 
vessels and canoes setting forth adventurously 
into the unknown, manned by active rowers, 
leaders in the prow, with their hands shading 
from their eyes the rising or the setting sun, 
peering anxiously forward to catch the faint blue 
line of hoped-for land, or occasionally turning 
a backward glance to dim shores far astern which 
they had left for ever. Into the strange waters, 
whether in the frigid North, whether in the tropic 
seas of the South, they must have urged their 
frail prows, from island to island, from promon- 
tory to promontory, or even venturing across 
shoreless seas, voyages which have left little more 
track upon history than they did upon the silent 
ocean which bore them. Again we mark these 
eager immigrants, voyagers no longer, wanderers 
no longer, busy with flint, axe, and chisel, quarry- 
ing, chipping, and carving : turned masons now, 
and bringing to being examples of work more 
wonderful, in comparison with their resources, 
than the work of the masons to-day. Look at 



A SUBLIME COSMOGONY 351 



them. What prodigies of art they are performing ! 
Mark the loving care with which they fit stone 
to stone ; behold the marshalling of strength to 
raise their weighty lintels, pillars, idols, archi- 
traves. See them in consultation, bringing to 
mind the figures and patterns of the art of the 
lands they had left, striving faithfully to repro- 
duce them, delving into memory, and perhaps 
scanning meagre records of design on belts and 
clothing preserved in their long wanderings. It 
may not be a mere flight of fancy that the dis- 
persal of the people of the Flood and the famous 
Babel Tower holds some key to the enigmas of 
time and civilisation. <; Go to, let us build us a 
city and a tower that will reach to heaven. Let 
us make a name, lest we be scattered upon the 
face of the earth and our name perish," must 
have been the animating motive, in great part, 
of the Toltecs, the Aztecs, the Incas, the Poly- 
nesians, and other ancient people who have left 
their strange monuments to posterity. 

Among nearly all the ancient myths, as we 
think, of peoples removed from each other by 
vast oceans even, myths interwoven and disguised 
often by bloody rites and hideous and idolatrous 
customs, we seem to trace nobler and spiritual 
features and purer beliefs, as if behind them, 
or having intertexture with them like the gold 
threads which barbaric weavers wove into their 
textiles, there runs, like a redeeming dream, some 
constant glimpse of an " All-Father." 

Furthermore, the feeling is strong that all 
knowledge has come from some primeval centre, 



352 THE SECRET OF THE PACIFIC 



and that the myths and fragments of prehistoric 
times which we find scattered about the world 
to-day are offshoots or remnants of such a centre. 
There must have been something in the remote 
past, I venture to repeat, about which we have 
yet to learn, something which may astonish and 
perhaps elevate us when we have learned it, 
something of which all the archaeological dis- 
coveries we are constantly making are perhaps 
only as the leaves of a book that, page by 
page, we are turning over— a book of which 
we have had to begin at the end. Was 
there perhaps, long ago, really some " Golden 
Age," when man was spread over the earth 
and lived and worshipped in the full enjoy- 
ment of its kindly fruits, and the seeds of the 
Tree of Knowledge were scattered far and wide— 
an age of which these monuments and our 
philosophies to-day are but fragments ? Has man 
always striven in the sweat of his brow to gain 
his bread, in cruelty and oppression, as under 
Pharaoh and Belshazzar, and as under the 
" machine age" of to-day? 

The possibility of some world-wide culture in 
very remote times, when perhaps continents and 
islands were differently disposed, is an attractive 
romance, perhaps with some measure of actuality 
behind it, which will receive greater attention as 
time goes on. Scientific theories and knowledge 
about that remote and mysterious period when 
man appeared, from which geology and ethnology 
are slowly taking definite shape, may wear a very 
different aspect in the future. At any moment 



A SUBLIME COSMOGONY 353 



new discoveries may yield something.] Perhaps 
we shall be right in thinking it all part of a 
greater problem concerning man and his arts in 
ancient times, all over the world, which we have 
yet to solve — part, perhaps, of some sublime and 
universal texture, which time could not annihilate 
and which seas and deserts were insufficient to 
sever. But, be it as it may, the answer to all these 
problems must surely be revealed sooner or later ; 
and the final solution of the Secret of the Pacific 
cannot be more than a question of time and 
research. 



23 



INDEX 



Adobe ruins, 160, 185 

Age of ruins, 46, 86, 152, 161, 

213, 299 
Ainos, 294, 301 
Akapana, doorway of, 171 
Alaska, 70, 312 
Aleutian Islands, 67 
Amazon, 167, 168, 283 
Anahuac, 51, 97 
Andenes, 178-80, 183, 200 
Andes, 50, 57, 158, 240, 310 
Angkor-Thom, 299 
Anthropoid apes, 24 
Apaches, 75 
Arch, 40, 128, 188, 208 
Arequipa, 193 
Argentina, 192 
Arizona, 79, 91, 216 
Asia, 68, 111, 192, 243, 301-10, 

347 

Assyria, 124, 169, 301 
Astronomy, native, 167, 252 
Atahualpa, 162, 184 
Atlantis, 38, 44, 309, 336, 

34i 

Australia, 304-8 

Axis, change of earth's, 337 

Aymaras, 46, 120, 169, 172 

Ayacucho, 173 

Aztecs, 18, 51, 97-117, 237 



Baalbek, 246 

Babylon, 39, 101, 123, 135, 169, 

243, 244, 248, 3 01 , 3 02 
Balboa, 153 

Bancroft, 68, 71, 228, 237 
Behring Strait, 43, 49, 69, 302 
Bharahat, 249 
Bingham, Professor, 172 
Blavatsky, Madame, 341 
Bolivia, 57, 169, 188, 234, 310 
Boro Budur, 40, 299 
Brahma, 300 
Brahmins, 135 

Brasseur de Bourbourg, 134, 

238, 342 
Brazil, 231 

Bridge, Sir Cyprian, views of, 

273, 282 
Bridges, native, 163 
Brinton, Dr., opinions, 38, 231, 

237-52 

British Columbia, 50, 70, 244, 

318 

British Honduras, 140 
Bronze period, 69, 188 
Buddhists, 38, 40, no, 244, 
248, 250, 340 

Cajamarca, 184 

Calendar, Mexican, 97, in, 243 



356 



INDEX 



California, 50, 75 
Caroline Islands, 280 
Cambodia, 294, 299, 305 
Casas Grandes, 92 
Central America, 56, 118-54 
Cerro de Pasco, 176 
Chaldea, 39, 171, 244, 253, 255 
Chan Chan, 187, 228 
Chasm Island, 306 
Chavin, 177 
Chiapas, 119 
Chicama Valley, 187 
Chichen Itza, 119, 135, 210, 286 
Chile, 50, 57, 188, 192, 215 
Chimus, 187, 190 
China, Chinese analogies, 39, 
42,46, 192,226, 234, 241, 253, 

293, 301, 303, 338 
Chiriqui, 151, 222 
Cholula, 106 
Choqquequirau, 173 
Christian, F. W., 276 
Cliff Dwellers, the, 79-92, 244 
Coati, 172 

Codex, Mexican, 96, 99, 124, 

148, 152 
Colombia, 57, 192 
Colonisation, 63 
Colorado, 79 
Colorado River, 90 
Column, use of, 184, 108, 216 
Community houses, 84, 216 
Copan, 96, 149, 152 
Cord-holders, 216 
Cortes, 97, 147 
Costa Rica, 141, 151 
Couvarde, 323 
" Cradle-lands," 25, 38, 39 
Creation myths, 148, 317 
Creator, the native conception 

of, 117, 318, 174, 321 



Cross, pre-Christian, 124, 349 
Cuvier, 247 

Cuzco, 53, 123, 164, 211 

Darwin, 312 
Delhi, 295 

Deluge stories, 106, 113, 317, 
33i 

Destruction of buildings, 34, 172 

Earthquakes, 210 

Easter Island, 31, 44, 95, 166, 

171, 257-66, 294 
Ecuador, 57, 153, 175, 192, 286 
Egypt, 39, I04> 105, in, 123, 
133, 134-7, 187, 228, 

244, 2531 255, 305, 326 
Enoch, Book of, 43, 333 
Eskimos, 65, 215, 231 
Evolution of architecture, 46 
Evolution story, native, 89, 148 

Fish emblem, 171, 261, 262, 

277, 286 
Four, sacred number, 252 
Friendly Islands, 279 
Funafuti, 312 

Geographical similarity of 
Asia and America, 23 

George Grey, Sir, 306 

Giants, legends of, 95, 106, 258 

Glacial period, 45 

Gran Chaco, 192, 326 

Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, 
70 

Greece, 194, 243, 244, 248, 299 
" Greek " pattern, 108, 145, 

194, 218, 244, 279 
Greenland, 75 
Guano, 197 

Guatemala, 141-50, 246 



INDEX 



357 



Hawaii. See Sandwich Islands 
Henequen fibre, 125 
Hieroglyphics, in, 114, 124, 

145, 152, 193, 226, 261, 264, 
Hindus, 234, 299 
Holmes, Dr., 44, 126 
Honduras, 150 
Huaitara, 173 
Huancanelica, 186 
Huanuco Viejo, 100, 173, 181-3, 

209 
Huaraz, 176 
Huayna Capac, 166 
Humboldt, 38, 113, 243, 247 
Hydah Indians, 70, 72, 318 
Hydraulic works, early, 87, 90, 

116,138, 180, 187, 198, 212 

Idols, Mexican, 102, 105 
Illimani, 312 
Inca astronomy, 167 
Inca doorways, 181 
Inca laws, 195-206 
Inca masonry, 165, 181, 188, 
208 

Inca origin, 161 

Inca population, 180 

Inca pottery, 190 

Inca roads, 162, 176, 215 

Inca-pre, 170, 177, 178, 191 

Incahuasi, 185 

Incas, 18, 120, 134, 137, 154- 

206, 283, 301 
India, 39, 46, 113, 139, 248, 

293, 295 
Intihuatana, 167 
Irrigation. See Hydraulics 
Iron, use of, 112, 188, 207 

Japan, 39, 234, 294, 301 
Java, 39, 248, 293, 299, 309 



Khmers, 299 

Kingsborough, Lord, 41, 95, 

238, 342 
Korea, 37, 299 
Kublai Khan, 41, 241, 303 

" Land Bridges," 26, 76, 308 
Languages, analogies of, 235 
Lauricocha Lake, 183 
Lehmann,Dr.,work of, 141, 142 
Lele, 280, 289 

Le Plongeon, Dr., 41, 133, 
342 

" Lost ten tribes," 38, 95, 247 

Maguey, 204, 340 
Malaysia, 26, 39, 268, 296-305 
Manco Capac, 160, 255 
Maranon, 177, 183 
Marianas, 290 
Marquesas, 275 
Mastodon, 136 

Maudslay, work of, 141, 150, 
152 

Maya " Arch," 40, 122, 118, 
129 

Mayas, 18, 51, 96, in, 118-54, 

175, 192, 210, 237, 243 
Melanesians, 274, 293 
Mesopotamia, 39, 253-6 
Metalanim, 281 

Metallurgy, native, 188, 221, 
319 

Mexico, 53, 55, 93-139, 209-256 
" Missing Link," 24, 25, 307 
Mitla, 107, 246 

Mongolian origin, 67, 192, 231- 

56, 296, 299-303 
Monoliths, transport of, 108, 

144, 170, 2ii, 259, 281, 287 
Monte Alban, 106 



358 



INDEX 



Mound-builders, 240 
Mummies, 103, 190 

Nahuatl language, 99 

Nansen, Dr., 77 

Navigation, early American, 

4 1 , 6 7, 73, 215, 241,254, 261, 

270, 293, 297, 338 
Nazca, 227 

Neolithic man, 69, 282, 313, 
3H 

New Mexico, 79 
New Zealand, 269, 295 
Nezahualcoyotl, 115 
Nicaragua, 141, 151, 245 
Noah, 95, 336 
Nootkas, 74 

Norse explorations, 18, 29, 77 
Oceania, 274 

Ollantaytambo, 167, 182, 211 
Oppression of natives, 125 
Oroya Railway, 176 
Otomies, 236 

Pachacamac, 185 

Pacific coast, 50 

Palenque, 40, 96, 122-4, 213 

Panama, 54, 57, 71, 89, 151, 

i53> 347 
Papantla, 107 
Papua, 268 
Patron, Dr., 253 
Perpetual snow-line, 158 
Persia, 37, 91, 187, 228, 244, 

250, 299 
Peru, 57, 105, 155-206, 209- 

256, 310 
Phallic emblems, 263, 324 
Picture-writing, 97, 111, 114, 

152 



Pisco, 186, 227 
Pitcairn Island, 274 
Polynesians, 44, 244, 262, 267 
Ponape, 280, 284 
Post, early American, 64, 97, 
242 

Pottery, early American, 105, 

190, 218 
Preservation of American ruins, 

34 

Pueblos, 89, 212 

Pyramids and pyramid-build- 
ing. See also " Teocallis," 
36, 101, 104, 106, 120, 144, 
145, 148, 151, 216, 288 

Quechuas, 47, 160, 303 
Ouetzalcoatl, 97 
Quiches, 53, 148, 237 
Quipos, 226 
Quirigua, 96, 143-52 
Quito, 175 
Quitos, 154 

Raimondi, 183 
Rubber, 125, 168 

Sacrificial stone, Mexican, 
101 

Sacsaihuaman, 164, 211 
Salvador, 141, 151 
Samoa, 269, 293, 295 
Sandwich Islands, 269, 273, 295 
Sanscrit, 236, 295 
Scarabs, 326 

Serpent emblem, 101, 102, 131, 

.178 

Siberia, 37, 66, 69 
Socialism, Inca, 195-206 
Solstices, determination of, 167 
Stein, Dr. Aurel, 304 



INDEX 



359 



Stelas of Guatemala, 144 
Stevenson, R. L., 278 
Subsidence theory, 313 
Sun dance, 68 

Sun worship, 20, 104, 161, 173, 

202, 318 
Sunken lands, 27, 44, 281, 292 
Swastika, 91, 248-52 

Tacna, 193 
Tahiti, 226, 275, 294 
Tartary, 38, 235 
Tasmania, 296 
Tehuantepec, no 
"Tennis-courts," Mexican, 121, 
133 

Teocallis, 101, 107 
Teotihuacan, 104, 286 
Terrace-building. See also An- 

denes, 106, 116 
Textile arts, 75, 219, 224 
Theosophy, 341 
Tiahuanaco, 169, 211, 213, 246, 

262 

Tibet, 37, 155, 226, 234, 243, 

299> 303 
Timon, 295 

Titicaca, Lake, 164, 255 
Toltecs, 18, 51, 88, 96, 114, 286 
Tonga Island, 279 
Tower of Babel tradition, 95, 
106 

Travel, conditions of, 54 



Trujillo, 187 

Tupac Yupanqui, 154 

" Unknown God," 21, 116, 174, 

271 
Utah, 79 
Uxmal, 126, 210 

Vancouver, 74 

Veddahs of Ceylon, 294, 304 

Vermilion, 186, 219 

Viracocha, 171 

Virchow, 67, 231, 247 

Wallace, Dr. A. W., opinions, 
38, 44, 77, 262, 269, 294, 301, 
304 

War god, Mexican, 101 
Wheat, 207 
Wheel, 207 

XOCHICHALCO, 107 

Yale expedition to Peru, 173 
Yap Island, 282 
Yucatan, 40, 45, 119-391 2 34 
Yucay Valley, 166 

Zacatecas, 92 
Zapotecs, 107, 118 
Zodiac, 113, 243 
Zuni Indians, 89 



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